Film Review

“The Dark Place” Review

“The Dark Place” delivers a positive LGBTQIA representation but not much else

The Dark Place, written and directed by Jody Wheeler, is a highly stylised attempt at redefining established television film tropes with an atmosphere reminiscent of noir. The production also has a copious amount of betrayal and immorality.

Keegan, depending on your perspective, is either gifted or cured with hyperthymesia. Hyperthymesia, like an eidetic memory, gives the sufferer the ability to recall everything in vivid detail. Keegan can recall everything in photographic detail. He consequently has total recall.

Wheeler’s film opens with the familiar sound of running water and Keegan Dark (Blaise Godbe Lipman) washing his hands before bathing his face. It’s a restaurant restroom. With exposition as a voiceover, Keegan tells the audience “most people … most people wish they could remember everything.” He is different because he “wishes he could forget anything … anything at all.”

From the title screen, the scene transitions to an image outside the Morrison Hotel Bar. Inside, we find Keegan and Will Roelen (Timo Descamps) discussing the former’s lack of impulse control. Because of his individualistic approach to life, Keegan doesn’t seem to care about how the people around him perceive his behaviour.

As Will attempts to fix his seventh radio in as little as six months, the conversation moves on to discuss their trip to Keegan’s family home. There are hopes for a reconciliation between Keegan and his long-estranged family.

When Keegan makes a telephone call to his mother from the bar, the bar manager is seen outside in a deep argument with some hooded man. Because has his back to the camera, we don’t know who this is or how this scene is relevant to the overall narrative until later in the production.

It’s not until later in the film that this scene with the bar manager is tied into the narrative. The mysteriously hooded man seen arguing with the bar manager is Keegan’s stepbrother Jake Bishop (Sean Paul Lockhart). At this point, with Keegan being out of touch with his family, he’s completely unaware he even has a stepbrother let alone a stepfather.