Movie Review: BLACKWATER LANE

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: June 21st, 2024 / 02:35 AM

BLACKWATER LANE movie poster | ©2024 Lionsgate

Rating: PG-13
Stars: Minka Kelly, Maggie Grace, Dermot Mulroney, Alan Calton, Natalie Simpson, Judah Cousin, Kris Johnson
Writer: Elizabeth Fowler, based on the novel THE BREAKDOWN by B.A. Paris
Director: Jeff Celentano
Distributor: Lionsgate
Release Date: June 21, 2024 (theatrical/VOD)

Based on B.A. Paris’s novel THE BREAKDOWN, BLACKWATER LANE has the odd distinction of being a thriller where viewers – at least, those acquainted with this subgenre – can guess what’s happening almost from the start.

We begin with narration by Cass Anderson (Minka Kelly) about “what happened.” Cass and her husband Matthew (Dermot Mulroney) are half-American/half-English. They grew up separately in the U.S., but now live in the U.K., in an enormous secluded mansion. Cass is a drama teacher; Matthew has an executive position that requires him to visit oil rigs.

It’s a dark and stormy night when Cass ignores Matthew’s warnings about driving through the wood and takes Blackwater Lane to get home. She comes across a car pulled off the road with its headlights on.

Cass gets out of her own car and peers through the rain into the other vehicle. There is a woman sitting motionless at the wheel.

Cass doesn’t try tapping on the window. Instead, she gets back into her car and drives the rest of the way home.

In the morning, the TV news announces that a woman has been found dead in her car on Blackwater Lane, under what police are calling suspicious circumstances.

Only now does Cass mention to Matthew that she saw the car. It takes police detective DC Lawson (Natalie Simpson) showing up at the door for Cass to talk to law enforcement about what she saw. Cass protests to Lawson and then to best friend Rachel (Maggie Grace) that it didn’t occur to her that the woman might be in distress, much less dead, and that she didn’t call the police because she was working up the nerve.

The intention here of the script by Elizabeth Fowler and the direction by Jeff Celentano seems to be to make us question Cass’s memory. But they’ve already made an enormous misstep. Unless they want us to wonder if our protagonist is a sociopath, Cass not checking on the motionless woman in the stopped car isn’t a matter of forgetfulness, but rather behavior that’s a lot stranger than the filmmakers seem to realize.

Many audience members will have figured out what’s happening already, simply from the tone. On the positive side of the ledger, it takes a good while for us to put together exactly where the corpse in the car fits into the proceedings.

We do get a lot of suspects, and some possibly supernatural goings-on within the house. There are some mild jumps, but the filmmakers are trying so hard to get us to follow the breadcrumbs that we don’t experience a lot of suspense.

BLACKWATER LANE emerges as nostalgic comfort food. People who love and miss those old movies of the week that had their heyday in the ‘70s will recognize and perhaps even welcome how familiar this feels.

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