The plot line of A DARK PLACE (a.k.a. STEEL COUNTRY) is uncomplicated. A fairly young man, Donald, works as a garbage collector in a small American town. Donald has some form of autism along the spectrum, but it's unspecified as to whether it's Asperger's, high functioning autism or something else on the spectrum. Donald is still living with and caring for his disabled mother who seems to be experiencing the opening salvos of dementia.
(Note: you will probably have noticed by now that I didn't give A DARK PLACE a very high star rating. It's lackadaisical representation of what is supposed to be some level of autism contributed to that low rating. Particular levels of autism are characterized by specific and established symptomology. Clearly the writer and the director cherry-picked their collection of behaviors for visual and emotional appeal and little else. I'm no snowflake or SJW, but I think if you don't want to be accused of appropriation/exploitation in your movie, then I think you should at least be obliged to make a legitimate representation of the syndrome you're leveraging to make your movie.)
Donald, in a manner characteristic of his syndrome, notices that a boy that usually waves to him as he performs his collection duties, suddenly fails to do so. This is a change, and, also in a manner characteristic of his syndrome, it makes Donald uncomfortable. This forms the basis of Donald's motivation throughout the movie to investigate what happened to Tyler Ziegler, the missing waving boy. As it turns out, Tyler is not only missing, he's dead.
Donald comes to find out that there are elements of Tyler's death, an apparent drowning, that seem overtly at odds with the type of thing that would reasonably happen to Tyler. It would have been very unusual, for example, for Tyler to be anywhere near the river given the fact that he was known to be terrified of it. When virtually the entire town does not seem to find Tyler's "accidental" drowning in the river to be anything suspicious, this also makes Donald uncomfortable, and he begins nosing around and asking difficult questions, rattling everybody's cages.
It isn't long before certain elements of the small town begin pushing back.
There was little about A DARK PLACE I found appealing. The whole idea of using an autistic person as the film's choice for the ever popular "Defective Detective" trope a la MONK, BONES, RAINES, LONGSTREET, TOUCHING EVIL, and on and on and on and on and on... seems a bad choice. This trope was stupid 10 years ago and now it's just unforgivable. The fact that they don't even represent the primary characters autism in a legitimate and consistent fashion just makes it jaw-dropping.
Secondly, while this is presumably supposed to be some kind of detective story, Donald doesn't really do any sort of actual detecting. He just goes around and talks to people who hand him clues on a plate. If the type of autism the movie was trying to represent was supposed to be Asperger's, which I guess would be the closest to the paint-by-numbers collection of behaviors represented in the movie, this represents a missed opportunity. People with Asperger's, while not universally so, quite often have unusually high intelligence and a surprising ability to connect information with intuitive leaps. Could have made for a fascinating detective story where the detective actually figured stuff out instead of just dully absorbing what he's handed.
In a particularly ham-fisted move, we are given to know that "this here's Trump country" by the presence of political posters promoting Trump. So, of course, everything evil and slimy and unspeakable that happens is only reasonable because, you know, it's clearly a town full of deplorables. I'm no great fan of Trump, but I can recognize a cheap shot from a director when I see it.
It's unfortunate that this was a movie with an untenable plot because the acting itself, scene to scene and outside of concern for what was being portrayed, was quite good. It's a shame it was wasted on this movie.
(Note: you will probably have noticed by now that I didn't give A DARK PLACE a very high star rating. It's lackadaisical representation of what is supposed to be some level of autism contributed to that low rating. Particular levels of autism are characterized by specific and established symptomology. Clearly the writer and the director cherry-picked their collection of behaviors for visual and emotional appeal and little else. I'm no snowflake or SJW, but I think if you don't want to be accused of appropriation/exploitation in your movie, then I think you should at least be obliged to make a legitimate representation of the syndrome you're leveraging to make your movie.)
Donald, in a manner characteristic of his syndrome, notices that a boy that usually waves to him as he performs his collection duties, suddenly fails to do so. This is a change, and, also in a manner characteristic of his syndrome, it makes Donald uncomfortable. This forms the basis of Donald's motivation throughout the movie to investigate what happened to Tyler Ziegler, the missing waving boy. As it turns out, Tyler is not only missing, he's dead.
Donald comes to find out that there are elements of Tyler's death, an apparent drowning, that seem overtly at odds with the type of thing that would reasonably happen to Tyler. It would have been very unusual, for example, for Tyler to be anywhere near the river given the fact that he was known to be terrified of it. When virtually the entire town does not seem to find Tyler's "accidental" drowning in the river to be anything suspicious, this also makes Donald uncomfortable, and he begins nosing around and asking difficult questions, rattling everybody's cages.
It isn't long before certain elements of the small town begin pushing back.
There was little about A DARK PLACE I found appealing. The whole idea of using an autistic person as the film's choice for the ever popular "Defective Detective" trope a la MONK, BONES, RAINES, LONGSTREET, TOUCHING EVIL, and on and on and on and on and on... seems a bad choice. This trope was stupid 10 years ago and now it's just unforgivable. The fact that they don't even represent the primary characters autism in a legitimate and consistent fashion just makes it jaw-dropping.
Secondly, while this is presumably supposed to be some kind of detective story, Donald doesn't really do any sort of actual detecting. He just goes around and talks to people who hand him clues on a plate. If the type of autism the movie was trying to represent was supposed to be Asperger's, which I guess would be the closest to the paint-by-numbers collection of behaviors represented in the movie, this represents a missed opportunity. People with Asperger's, while not universally so, quite often have unusually high intelligence and a surprising ability to connect information with intuitive leaps. Could have made for a fascinating detective story where the detective actually figured stuff out instead of just dully absorbing what he's handed.
In a particularly ham-fisted move, we are given to know that "this here's Trump country" by the presence of political posters promoting Trump. So, of course, everything evil and slimy and unspeakable that happens is only reasonable because, you know, it's clearly a town full of deplorables. I'm no great fan of Trump, but I can recognize a cheap shot from a director when I see it.
It's unfortunate that this was a movie with an untenable plot because the acting itself, scene to scene and outside of concern for what was being portrayed, was quite good. It's a shame it was wasted on this movie.