In 2015 A24 was released Dark places, one of his relatively few flops. Surprisingly enough, too, Dark places It is an adaptation of a novel by Gillian Flynn, whose novel also inspired the highly successful film The Missing Girl just a year earlier. The book is getting another chance at adaptation, with HBO planning to turn it into a limited TV series soon.
This series will follow in the footsteps of the HBO series Sharp objects of 2018, also an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Gillian Flynn. Grappling with some plot points and similar themes such as Dark places, sharp objects It's a must see in preparation for the next show.
What is Dark Places about?
Dark places, Both the film and the novel on which the miniseries will be based focus on a woman, Libby Day, who is the sole surviving witness to the murder of her mother and two sisters during her childhood. She testified that she saw her teenage brother, Ben, threaten and kill her mother before she ran away. However, running out of charity money she had received after the murders, she agrees to investigate again that night after a local true crime club offers to pay her to do so. They believe her brother is innocent and need Libby to overturn her testimony before the courts destroy her file and officially close the case forever.
Her journey takes her back to her hometown in Kansas and leads her to discover new information about her family, such as the fact that before the murders, Ben had been accused of molesting a girl, and that he had a girlfriend, Diondra, who he impregnated. Interspersed with scenes of her family in the past where Ben and Diondra plan to run away and Libby's mother, Patty, dealing with the impending foreclosure of the family home, Libby interviews the girl Ben allegedly molested, her father, and even Ben himself.
However, the film received largely negative reviews, despite its seemingly promising plot and stellar cast (including Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, and Chloë Grace Moretz). Dark places seeks to explore themes of satanic panic, poverty and family dysfunction, showing Ben's adolescent antics and recklessness as a result of his family's hardships. However, its slow pace and standard mystery-thriller tone cause many of the deeper themes to fall through the cracks., and the film fails to be anything more than a dull mystery. The killer's true identity seems to come out of nowhere and the characters act in largely inexplicable ways; the film doesn't even trust itself enough to show Libby's thoughts and feelings, often using a voiceover instead.
Sharp objects share many similarities with dark places
While Dark places he fails to adapt the complexities of his novel to the film, Sharp objects brilliantly adapts her novel into a gripping and suspenseful TV series. Featuring a phenomenal cast that includes Patricia Clarkson, Amy Adams, and a pre-Euphoria Sydney Sweeney, Sharp objects follows Camille Preaker, a journalist who returns to her hometown to investigate the disappearance and murders of two young girls. She has recently completed a stay in a psychiatric hospital for chronic self-harm and is reluctant to return home because of her strained relationship with her mother and the death of her younger sister, Marian, when they were both children.
However, the case is an opportunity for her to make a name for herself, and as a resident of the small, isolated town, she may be the only reporter who can get a good read on the story. Camille reunites with her mother, Adora Crellin, her stepfather, Alan Crellin, and meets her teenage stepsister, Amma Crellin, for the first time. She is forced to confront the trauma she has from her family. Camille is constantly haunted by Marian's absence, but she stays and investigates the murders with the town detective on the case. However, the truth is difficult to uncover, as gossip abounds in the small town and Camille's mother gets in the way, insisting that Camille not do her job for the sake of her reputation.
Camille also finds herself bonding with Amma, who lives a strange double life; at home, she is the perfect child for Adora, but in public, she is a precocious and wild teenager with a lot of secrets who roller skates around town with her friends, getting drunk and taking drugs. As Camille opens up about her childhood, it becomes obvious that the town has always been dominated by a patriarchal culture that leads to the oversexualization and aggression of girls. Very atmospheric and character-driven, Sharp objects shows the kind of culture that leads to violence against girls.
Sharp objects clearly shares a lot in common with Dark places, but it develops the themes and plot points better than the film. Both focus on murder mysteries in the Southern United States, but Sharp objects does a much better job of painting a picture of the setting. As Camille interacts with the town's people and the town detective, the toxic isolation on the town's polite exterior is exposed. Also effective Sharp object exploration of family abuse, with Adora being a patently poor mother and Amma a disadvantaged child, only to discover that both are even more sinister than they initially seemed. The series is a great watch for all fans of family dramas and thrillers, and also offers a promising glimpse into what the new Dark places It could be like a series produced by HBO.
Gillian Flynn to star in new series Dark Places
Perhaps the most promising news for the Dark places the series is that Gillian Flynn will be involved in writing the screenplay, unlike in the film.Sharp objects was written with his involvement, and while he made some changes to the novel, those alterations were able to serve the story the novel had told, rather than detract from it. Flynn was also involved in the screenplay for The missing girl, her best-known work, which earned her a Golden Globe nomination. The film follows her signature structure, cutting between past and present, while also being a female-centric psychological thriller. Sharp objects It also earned Flynn (and the other writers) a nomination from the Writers Guild of America, among many other awards the series has won.
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Gillian Flynn Film and TV Projects |
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|---|---|
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Title |
Rotten Tomatoes Score |
|
The Missing Girl (2014) |
88% |
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Sharp objects Italian: |
92% |
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Widows Italian: |
91% |
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Utopia Italian: (2020) |
50% |
Flynn also wrote screenplays for the underrated thriller film Widows and the television series Utopia, neither of which were adaptations of his works. Widows also earned her multiple award nominations. Her lowest-rated project is Utopia, which still receives some positive feedback amid its mixed reviews, and suffered largely from the timing of its release; a lugubrious spectacle about a secret organization designed to convince people of a deadly new pandemic, forcing them to get vaccinated in order to sterilize them, was not the entertainment most were looking for in 2020. Aside from that stumble, all of Flynn's works have been successful and widely praised, which bodes well for the new Dark places series.
There is no exact release date for the new series yet, so audiences have plenty of time to watch it. Sharp objects Before Dark places is released. Flynn and his co-creators and show writers, husband-and-wife team Brett Johnson (Escape to Dannemora, Mad Men) and Guerrin Gardner, now have the opportunity to do justice to Flynn's original novel and create a more faithful, or at least more effective, adaptation.