Blackwater Lane movie storyline. Cass Anderson (Minka Kelly) teaches drama and lives with her husband, Matthew (Dermot Mulroney), in a beautiful old English house. One night, driving home from an after-school celebration, Cass takes a shortcut through the woods. It’s pouring rain, and she sees a car by the side of the road with a woman inside.
She drives home and learns the next morning that the woman was murdered. She talks about it at lunch with her best friend, Rachel (Maggie Grace), but, during the conversation, Cass seems to have begun forgetting things. She goes back to where the car was parked and finds one of her own earrings. A contract for a new security system for the house was signed by her, but she has no memory of it. Unfortunately, she also starts seeing ghosts and believes her life may be in danger. Or is her mind playing tricks on her?
Blackwater Lane is an American horror film directed by Jeff Celentano and starring Minka Kelly, Dermot Mulroney, Maggie Grace, Natalie Simpson, Alan Calton, Edward Baker-Duly, Sally Blouet, Pandora Clifford, Judah Cousin, Ross Donnelly and Kris Johnson. The screenplay was written by Elizabeth Fowler and B.A. Paris.
Film Review for Blackwater Lane
If you want to steer clear of thriller or horror movie situations in real life, one smart move would be to limit your locations to addresses with innocuous names like Pumpernickel Boulevard or SE 137th Street. Scary circumstances in fright films are always exclusive to places with ominous names like Witch Cauldron Canyon or Haunted Hangman Hollow.
Which is bad news for schoolteacher Cass Anderson. The quickest shortcut to her remote mansion runs through the dark woods of Blackwater Lane, so you just know something awful is bound to happen there. Cass is one of three characters specifically described as “half-British,” which “Blackwater Lane” makes a conspicuous point about, seemingly only to address why the movie takes place in the UK.
Yet is headlined by three American actors. It’s almost as sore of a thumb as Cass’s pretentiously poetic narration about her favorite time of the year being when summer gives way to autumn, because “the falling leaves seem to remind us that the only constant is change.” This is odd as it prefaces a scene where Cass says goodbye to her students since the current term is over. Shouldn’t school be starting in the fall, not ending?
On her nighttime drive home through Blackwater Lane, which coincides with a rainstorm of course, Cass sees a woman inside a car stopped on the side of the road. Cass doesn’t think too much of it until a news bulletin the next morning reports the woman was found murdered. More shocking than that, it turns out Cass casually knew the woman as a coworker of her longtime best friend Rachel.
Not long after, Cass begins experiencing strange events. These things start with the usual static-filled phone calls and a random figure seen standing on her lawn, then escalate into being nearly drowned in a bathtub by an unseen hand and completely forgetting various encounters she swears never happened. Cass’s husband Matthew, a textbook “disbelieving spouse” trope, reminds Cass she’s had memory issues ever since her dementia-afflicted mother’s tragic death, so his concern extends as far as gaslighting Cass into thinking any unusual occurrence is probably just another “crazy wife” hallucination.
Cliched characters continue popping in as Cass ends up implicated in the mysterious murder. First on that docket is the dogged detective who forgoes the phone in favor of coming all the way out to Cass’s isolated estate whenever she needs to ask a follow-up question, even if it’s just one.
Next come the red herrings as “Blackwater Lane” expands its story to introduce romantic affairs linking Cass, her husband, her friend, the victim’s husband, and others to having possibly salacious motives for murder. By far the best of these, and by “best” I mean “most stereotypical,” is Cass’s handsome colleague John, who teaches alongside her during the day and is also a tennis instructor, uh, I guess not during the day but maybe on weekends? It’s like “Blackwater Lane” insisted on having the standard hot tennis coach as a possibly murderous side piece, but could only connect him to Cass by making him her coworker at a totally different job, too.
Based on B.A. Paris’s novel “The Breakdown,” “Blackwater Lane” is obsessed with ending every other scene on a fade to black even more than George Lucas was fascinated with wipe transitions in “Star Wars.” Standing out for all the wrong reasons, clunky editing like that appears to be par for this film’s course. It’s just a shame that of all the conventions “Blackwater Lane” predictably follows, trimming a flabby 105 down to a svelte 90 minutes wasn’t on the checklist. With a rate of roughly three producers to every one person in the cast, you’d think someone would have covered that base.
The real mystery of “Blackwater Lane” is how it ended up independently produced when it fulfills all the common criteria for a filler film Netflix likes to overpay for. It has a good-looking cast of mid-level names, any of whom could feature on a “Law & Order” spinoff. It has an easy-to-follow formula for featherweight suspense. It has a potboiled plot tailor-made for wine sippers who like tawdry tales.
One thing “Blackwater Lane” doesn’t have is a single element to set it apart from every similar slow-burn yarn going through the motions of someone questioning their sanity only to discover, surprise, they were never really crazy at all. I don’t know what goes on over on Pumpernickel Boulevard, but I’m confident it’s a million times more interesting than what happens on “Blackwater Lane
Blackwater Lane (2024)
Directed by: Jeff Celentano
Starring: Minka Kelly, Dermot Mulroney, Maggie Grace, Natalie Simpson, Alan Calton, Edward Baker-Duly, Sally Blouet, Pandora Clifford, Judah Cousin, Ross Donnelly, Kris Johnson
Screenplay by: Elizabeth Fowler, B.A. Paris
Cinematography by: Felix Cramer
Film Editing by: Douglas Crise
Costume Design by: Arianna Dal Cero
Art Direction by: Errol Jarc
Music by: Nathan Halpern
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violent content, thematic elements involving suicide, sexuality and terror.
Distributed by: Lionsgate Films
Release Date: June 21, 2024
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