The week’s second under-par release featuring Chloë Grace Moretz is an adaptation of Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn’s typically twisty 2009 potboiler. The producer and star, Charlize Theron, plays Libby Day, a tormented soul whose brother, Ben, has been in prison for murdering his mother and sisters ever since Libby testified against him as an eight-year-old. Lyle Wirth (Nicholas Hoult), an amateur criminologist-cum-murder-geek, and his “kill club” cohorts believe that Ben is innocent, but Libby is unwilling to face up to the guilty secrets that lurk in her own... dark places!
The premise is creaky and the satanic-scare backstory more intriguingly handled in Alejandro Amenábar’s wrongly ridiculed Regression. But Sarah’s Key director Gilles Paquet-Brenner invests the split-time action with some brooding menace and the cinematographer, Barry Ackroyd, does his best to lend some urgency, even as things spiral from suspense into outright silliness.
