Opening Friday, Feb. 28th at IFC Center is an eccentric neo-noir set in Niagara Falls about a woman in her 30s- Abby (Tuppence Middleton) who warily returns home when her mother dies to settle accounts with her straight-laced, married sister Laure (Hannah Gross). What they have to deal with is selling their parents’ motel- The Rainbow Inn- to a wealthy contractor, which Abby bristles at. She moves into the abandoned motel and begins obsessing on a moment in her past that has haunted her life. When she was a young girl, fishing with her family by a lake, she saw a young boy hiding in the woods. He was disheveled and scared had a bloody patch over one eye, and she watched in disbelief and horror as a strange couple captured him, threw him in the trunk of a car and drove off. No one believed her story at the time and she now throws herself into tracking down clues as to who the boy was, rather than deal with the reality of selling the motel.
David Cronenberg plays a paranoid, oddball podcaster and conspiracy nut who is a font of knowledge about Niagara Falls and Abby goes to him for information. She tracks down a famed married magician couple- The Magnificent Moulins, whose son supposedly died falling off the falls. She confronts the handsome, unscrupulous and well-heeled man buying her mother’s property who might be tied into the kidnapping of the boy. And a shady, scary couple who once worked for the Moulins. As Abby goes all Nancy Drew, what’s refreshing is that she often does it badly and comes away with more questions than answers. Also, the more revealed about Abby’s past exposes her to be an unstable, untrustworthy witness to authorities and her exasperated sister.
Director Albert Shin’s unconventional approach to this thriller often pays off in spades, and the ending is so smart, surprising and thought-provoking that any annoyance I had at the meandering story-telling evaporated. Niagara Falls is a perfect, seedy, atmospheric backdrop, and this unusual mystery seems laced with sinister dread.
Sounds perfect for me.