There’s an almost unrepentant gloom to director Alexandros Avranas‘ troubling 2016 thriller Dark Crimes, a slow, moody crime drama starring Jim Carrey. There’s no shortage of films like this that find the shadows home to harrowing stories of the worst humans have to offer, sinking to unseamly depths in peeling back the layers of an evil most never know of. Some do this with a fearless intensity, bringing light into the darkness while delivering horrors with clever investigation, like Jonathan Demme‘s terrifying The Silence of the Lambs or David Fincher‘s shattering Se7en.
It’s clear these films influenced Avranas and screenwriter Jeremy Brock movie, based on an article by writer David Grann. Dark Crimes lives up to its namesake, delving into some truly disturbing moments of cruelty, saturating its bleak themes of murder and psychology with an oppressive greyness. It’s a story with no joy in its discovery, which to be fair, neuters the experience not long after it begins, leaving this frustratingly incomplete, the viewer in constant expectation of something that will incite deeper investment.
That sounds like a condemnation or worse, a declaration to avoid watching. If you’ve heard of this movie and checked out the critical concessess, you’ve seen it’s not good. Not at all. Rotten Tomatoes has it at an astonishing 0%. That’s harsh. I gave it two stars on release with the intention of giving it another shot some time later, and now, as that time has come, I find myself weirdly drawn to the world of Dark Crimes more than the story it houses. (Read that review to learn more about story.)
So no, this isn’t going to one of those articles that tries to defend a bad movie because yes, to be sure, there are things wrong here, though not like you might expect. This is a quality production (cinematographer Michal Englert deserves praise) with a strong cast and a smart style. The story is clever and the setting compelling. That it doesn’t come together like it should is strangely hard to put a finger on, the darkness of it all certainly weighing it down, and the sometimes generic a,b,c’s of how things unfold holding some of the blame.
Still, where Dark Crimes finds better footing is in its performances and a few truly good moments that point to how this might have had heavier impact. I have to start with Carrey, who I think did everything he could to save this, his already manic history on film lending a lot of weight to his stoic, deeply constrained work here. With a tight crew cut and thick, greying beard, he plays a somewhat disgraced detective with a second chance, deciding to use that in solving an old case based on a new audiobook that seems to detail the secrets of the crime.
Carrey digs deep in centering a man with a failing marriage and no friends, his mind focused on trying to regain his status at work. Carrey doesn’t speak much, his performance one of rigid stares and purposeful movements, the lines on his face drawing paths to pain unseen. Carrey speaks with a Russian accent, which is distracting at first, but he makes it work not long after, the character so burdened by himself that the voice becomes less a stab at regional dialect than a kind of sound effect in shaping the distorted figure on screen. Where Carrey takes this character will not be easy for fans of the comedian who expect a kind of frenzied physical zaniness, this instead a jarring, edgy take on contempt that perhaps few could make work. I think he does it right.
There’s also the incomparable and underrated Charlotte Gainsbourg, who is no stranger to taking risks, giving yet another achingly personal performance, her drug addled character used and abused throughout. Gainsbourg is monumental here and deserves far more credit for what she contributes, her work forgotten in a film that lets both her and Carrey down. A final (blistering) moment as she speaks into the camera is some of the best work she’s ever done.
I won’t say that Dark Crimes does as it intends, though I can’t deny that it has aged well in the few years since its release. Fans of high action, quick cut, beat ’em up thrillers are going to run from this, and others looking for a more conventional detective crime caper will surely find better elsewhere. However, those willing to let a film’s actors do all the heavy lifting, appreciating their efforts when most everything else can’t stand up to scrutiny, Dark Crimes has its rewards.