Dark River ** (2017, Ruth Wilson, Mark Stanley, Sean Bean) – Movie Review

Writer-director Clio Barnard’s dark and gloomy 2017 drama Dark River is a harrowing, depressing experience and a none too successful movie, afflicted by some of the inevitable clichés of the family abuse genre. However, the two main performances of troubled adult siblings haunted by the horrors of the past are highly praiseworthy, in difficult circumstances that they manage to negotiate persuasively.

The film is somehow chilly and over-heated at the same time, with rough edges that Barnard cannot iron out. You know what, there is nothing surprising about this film anywhere. It means well, but is all very obvious.

Ruth Wilson stars as Alice Bell, who returns to her home village for the first time in 15 years after the death of her father (Sean Bean) who has sexually abused her, to claim the tenancy to the Yorkshire family sheep farm she believes is rightfully hers after her father’s promise to leave it to her.

[Spoiler alert] Mark Stanley plays her aberrant drunken brother Joe, a man as violent as the father, who wants to sell the tenancy to a developer. With this in mind, the tenancy is handed over to him and not to Alice.

Dark River is very well performed by the expressive Wilson, in a portrait of grim determination to survive somehow against menacing male domination, and she is strongly supported by Stanley in a commendable performance in an alienating, unforgiving part. Esme Creed-Miles and Aiden McCullough play the young Alice and Joe in flashbacks. Bean has a completely ungrateful small role.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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