In A Dark Place Review (2006)
Starring: Leelee Sobieski, Tara Fitzgerald, Christian Olson, Gabrielle Adam, Graham Pountney
Director: Donato Rotunno
Writer: Peter Waddington (based on the novella “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James)
Release Date: 2006
Runtime: 1 hour 30 minutes

Continuing the Leelee Sobieski rewatch series, In A Dark Place didn’t make my Top 5 list, and having revisited it I still think it deserves its honorable mention. It’s not a bad film by, and I’d say its overall pretty good, but it is a frustrating one. It’s the kind of movie that builds cool atmosphere and has interesting performances for a good stretch before steering into an ending that doesn’t land the way it needs to.

In A Dark Place is a modern day adaptation of Henry James’ classic 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw, relocated from the Victorian era to the present day. Anna Veigh (Sobieski) is an art teacher who loses her job under murky circumstances and takes a position as a live-in nanny for two orphaned children, Miles and Flora, at a large, isolated country estate called Bly House. Their wealthy uncle is absent and essentially unreachable. The children are charming, the house is beautiful, and things seem fine until they very much are not. Anna starts seeing figures on the grounds that no one else will acknowledge, her predecessor died under suspicious circumstances, and Miles was expelled from school for reasons the headmaster refuses to put in writing. Classic haunted house setup, executed with reasonable competence.

What the film does well in its first two acts is atmosphere. Bly House is a great and effective setting; it’s isolated and quietly oppressive. Director Donato Rotunno uses it well enough to create a steady low level unease throughout. The question of whether Anna is actually seeing ghosts or whether something is coming apart inside her is kept alive long enough to stay interesting, and that ambiguity is where the film is at its strongest.

Leelee does good work here throughout. It certainly isn’t her best performance, the role does not give her the same kind of material that Joan of Arc or My First Mister did, but she commits fully to a character who spends most of the film on the edge of unraveling, and there is skill in how she handles that slow deterioration. It is a quieter, more internal performance than most of her work in this series, and it succeeds on its own terms.

Tara Fitzgerald as Miss Grose, the estate’s housekeeper, is the standout of the supporting cast. Fitzgerald brings a layered, somewhat cold energy to the role that keeps you slightly off balance about where her loyalties actually lie, and she is consistently the most watchable presence in any scene she is in. I spent half the film assuming she knew more than she let on and was a villain. The two children, played by Christian Olson and Gabrielle Adam, also do solid work in what are tricky roles — creepy children in horror films are a minefield and both handle themselves quite well.

My problem with this one is the ending. The film spends a good portion of its runtime playing things carefully. It keeps the supernatural elements ambiguous, letting the psychological angle breathe, and then the final act makes choices that feel like a swerve rather than a payoff. Without getting into specifics, the direction the film ultimately commits to does not feel earned by what came before it, and it left me sitting there trying to figure out what the film was actually trying to say. The ambiguity that was the movie’s greatest strength gets resolved in a way that is neither satisfying as a ghost story nor fully convincing as a psychological thriller. It just kind of lands with a thud and then it is over.

I get what it was implying at the end, and can see it, but it just seemed like a tacked on ending. Nothing that came before it in the first two acts seemed to be pointing in that direction. It would be one thing if you only saw delusion from Anna’s perspective, but that’s not the case.

That said I still liked it and would not talk anyone out of watching In A Dark Place, particularly any Leelee fans working through her filmography the way I have been. There is enough here with the atmosphere, the performances, and the interesting setup to make it a worthwhile watch, even if the destination is a disappointment. It’s a flawed film made with more care than its reputation suggests, and Leelee reminds you throughout why she deserved more opportunities than Hollywood ultimately gave her (or maybe that she took).

In A Dark Place gets a three out of five: SUBSTANTIAL.

If you enjoyed this review, check out my review of Leelee Sobieski in The Glass House. You can also check out my Top 5 Lee Sobieski Movies article, which houses links to all of my reviews of her films. And you can browse all of our movie reviews by clicking here.

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