'Dark Places' Trailer: Charlize Theron Hunts For Her Family's Killler

The trailer for Dark Places, based on the novel by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn, is creepy and eerie and looks like a dark, compelling whodunit. Libby Day (Charlize Theron) survived the murder of her whole family, but when she is confronted by a mysterious group of crime solvers years later, she is forced to confront what she actually saw, or didn’t, as the case may be. Check out the trailer below.

Unfolding across multiple time frames, with a stellar cast, gothic setting and feel, and rampant moral ambiguity, in addition to Gone Girl, Dark Places is going to earn comparisons, rightly or wrongly, to the first season of HBO’s True Detective. We’ll wait to see how it unfolds, and here is the official synopsis:

Libby Day (Charlize Theron) was only seven years old when her mother and two sisters were brutally murdered in their rural Kansas farmhouse. In court, the traumatized child pointed the finger at her brother, Ben (Tye Sheridan), and her testimony put the troubled 16-year-old in prison for life. Twenty-five years later, a broke and desperate Libby has run through donations from a sympathetic public and royalties from her sensational autobiography, without ever moving past the events of that night. When Libby accepts a fee to appear at a gathering of true-crime aficionados led by Lyle Wirth (Nicholas Hoult), she is shocked to learn most of them believe Ben is innocent and the real killer is still at large. In need of money, she reluctantly agrees to help them reexamine the crime by revisiting the worst moments of her life.  But as Libby and Lyle dig deeper into the circumstances surrounding the murders, her recollections start to unravel and she is forced to question exactly what she saw – or didn’t see. As long-buried memories resurface, Libby begins to confront the wrenching truths that led up to that horrific night. Also starring Christina Hendricks, Corey Stoll and Chloë Grace Moretz, Dark Places is an ingeniously twisted thriller based on the best-selling novel by Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl).

While this trailer looks cool and intense, like a slow-burn murder mystery with lots of twists and turns, it’s weird that it’s not getting a bigger release. Dark Places has been in the can for a while now, and with all the hype around Gone Girl, it would have made sense to release it and capitalize on that connection, but that’s not how it’s going down. It’s available starting now for 30 days exclusively on DirecTV before it moves to a larger platform on August 7, which includes a theatrical run and VOD release. This is an unusual approach, so you have to wonder, but A24 has had success with different release strategies before.