‘Blackwater Lane’ Review

Stars: Minka Kelly, Maggie Grace, Dermot Mulrooney, Natalie Simpson, Edward Baker-Duly, Alan Calton, Sally Blouet, Pandora Clifford | Written by Elizabeth Fowler | Directed by Jeff Celentano

There are plenty of reasons that murder mysteries are generally very popular. They can be made relatively cheaply, they can go straight to streaming/TV or on the big screen and a lot of people like watching them, whether it’s ‘background viewing’ or a more concentrated watch. Blackwater Lane ticks many of these boxes, both good and bad.

The murder mystery part seems pretty simple at first, as late one night a woman drives by a stranded motorist who is later revealed to be murdered. However a series of events lead the woman to believe that she might be the next victim.

At times, this does feel like a very run-of-the-mill, channel 5-style drama/murder mystery. It just runs through so many of the generic tropes of those similar movies. It does then throw in plenty of horror elements too, but these all feel very generic too. There’s a bit of a gothic horror in its style but then we get obvious loud noise jump scares and televisions turning on all by themselves and very obvious ‘creepy’ things going on in the background. When done right, all these can work well. But, everything in Blackwater Lane comes across as average at best.

And it seems like the filmmakers know this because the story goes along exactly as you would expect but then goes all out to be ridiculous. It’s like the writers thought, this is a bit too samey as numerous other films, let’s do something different. And, if I’m honest, I’d rather this was the case with many movies but Blackwater Lane gets a bit too ludicrous. The director clearly realises this because they spend a good chunk of the final moments of the movie trying to explain exactly what they have just witnessed. And even with some kind of explanation, there are still a few things that make no sense whatsoever.

There are a couple of recognisable names here. Even if you’re not quite sure what you’ve seen him, you’ll recognise Dermot Mulroney from something (Scream VI, Stoker, Friends, to name a few) and he is here, like he usually is, very watchable. Minka Kelly is okay in the lead but is sometimes guilty of over-acting a little and Maggie Grace (Fear of the Walking Dead, Lost) is as dependable as ever. But, everyone struggles with a script that is all over the place and doesn’t have the best dialogue.

Although the pace is kind of slow, I can’t say I was ever bored with Blackwater Lane. I wanted to know what was happening and how it was going to end, even if the conclusion didn’t satisfy me.

There’s no doubt plenty of people that will watch Blackwater Lane and find it enjoyable enough. It’s like one of those movies twenty years ago that you might catch on TV accidentally one night and happily sit through. But there are so many movies that are very similar and a good chunk of those that are better, so it’s hard to recommend this murder mystery over any of them.

Blackwater Lane will be released on digital platforms on January 27th, courtesy of Plaion Pictures.