Blackwater Lane opens with gorgeous shots of the landscape belongings to Elsing Hall, a medieval mansion in Norfolk. In the film, it’s called Crawford House and is home to teacher Cass (Minka Kelly, The Roommate) and her husband Matthew (Dermot Mulroney, My Best Friend’s Wedding), who is a successful businessman. He’s asleep in one room while Cass sits cross-legged in another, pulling tarot cards. She draws The Empress, a card traditionally associated with maternal influence. It represents themes of fertility, nurturing, creation, and abundance. The window is open, but a raven flies into the closed side, killing itself. It’s a good way to start the film. There’s gothic and occult imagery, the beauty of autumn—of the English countryside—and the softness of our protagonist.
Following an end-of-term party, Cass spots a car stranded on the side of the road down Blackwater Lane. Inside sits a woman, but it’s dark and stormy to see anything clearly, so Cass drives off. The next morning, Matthew informs her that the woman in the car is dead and the police are treating it as a homicide. Cass learns that the woman is her co-worker, Jane Walters. Before long, Cass believes she’s being stalked or haunted and sets out to uncover the truth behind Jane’s death. But, as these things often go, no one believes her. No one else sees what she sees. Not the man standing outside her property, not the woman in the TV, or the bloody knife.
Based on B.A. Paris’s 2017 novel The Breakdown, the first half of the film leans into both haunted house thriller and murder mystery, while the second half becomes somewhat of a mental state intervention. Cass cannot be trusted to have a true grip on reality following her previous mental breakdown and her deceased mother’s early onset dementia. Matthew and her best friend Rachel (Maggie Grace, Lost) are concerned. They tell Cass she is forgetting things, experiencing memory lapses. Blackwater Lane flips the narrative, but the twists can be seen a mile away and dementia isn’t new to the horror genre. It does, however, make the brain condition seem scary and confusing, as it often is, which is worthy of raising awareness for. But it’s sure to receive mixed views for its use here.
What makes Blackwater Lane stand out from the rest is its haunting camerawork, which is never boring and helps to create suspense. The cinematography is quite lovely and night shots are well-lit. The use of sound effects and score are effective. Director Jeff Celentano succeeds in creating the elements for a haunted house thriller, but it does fall short. Unfortunately, the film never sustains its suspense, which makes it feel flat. While the filmmaking is impressive, Blackwater Lane is nothing more than a tower of tropes wearing a trench coat. Kelly and Grace try their best with the bland and generic script, which was adapted for the screen by Celentano and Elizabeth Fowler, but Mulroney’s character is boring and his acting inexpressive. The climax gets all too dramatic and is followed by an epilogue explaining what happened. Blackwater Lane is sufficient for fans of Lifetime movies and sometimes that’s enough, but it will be interesting to hear from fans of the book.
Blackwater Lane is coming to digital download from 27th January.
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