EVERY SECRET THING – The Review

Eight years ago, a baby went missing and two young girls Ronnie and Alice (Dakota Fanning and Danielle Macdonald) were convicted of the crime and placed in juvenile detention. They’re now both 18 and are trying to move on with their lives after having served their time. Detective Nancy Porter (Elizabeth Banks) thinks history is repeating itself when another young girl goes missing in the same town. Of course the two main suspects are Ronnie and Alice. But as Porter begins to investigate the girls and their families, especially Alice’s mother (Diane Lane), they unearth a web of secrets and deceptions that calls everything into question.

What begins as a slow and meditative character piece – showing how traumatic events from your past can affect your day-to-day life – evolves into a police procedural mystery without much intrigue. In fact, it doesn’t take long for the film to completely flat-line, never gaining any form of life after initially introducing the characters. Most of the time EVERY SECRET THING feels like it’s going through the motions. For a story filled with high stakes and heightened emotions, there isn’t much gusto behind the proceedings. A story filled with cold characters and harsh consequences is presented in an even colder light. I’m usually a fan of films that explore the dark underbelly of suburbia. Denis Vileneuve’s 2013 film PRISONERS is an excellent example of this type of film done right. Unfortunately director Amy Berg never gives the audience a character to care for or a reason to care about their outcome.

All the performances are on point; especially Fanning. Even if she’s practically typecast as the waifish, insecure girl who mopes around more often than not, you can see she’s trying to breathe life into this underwritten character. Newcomer Danielle Macdonald on the other hand is garishly over the top most of the time. She plays a character that is longing for attention, but instead comes across as an actress vying for attention in a film with bigger name actors. The rest of the cast delivers the script in appropriate fashion, but competent actors aren’t enough to fill the gaps in this film.

One of my least favorite elements to a mystery is keeping a fact that most of the characters know on-screen except the audience until late in a film for a reveal. Over an hour into a 90-minute film a secret is revealed about a character to add motivation for their actions. Sometimes this act of deception can work and add depth to previous events, whereas other times it just feels like a cheap ploy. The latter is the case in EVERY SECRET THING. Keeping a secret motivation like the one here from the audience for the majority of the film feels too much like the murderer in an Agatha Christie novel going on a lengthy monologue towards the end of the story explaining what their diabolical plan was all along.

For all that doesn’t work in EVERY SECRET THING, the film does show how easily someone can misread another’s personality, and how some stories can be misconstrued by others or the media. Amy Berg’s background working as a documentary filmmaker (especially her film WEST OF MEMPHIS) certainly helped with that. But what made those previous films work so well is that you got to know the people in front of the camera; you understood their problems but got to see them as real people as well. Even though EVERY SECRET THING is based on an acclaimed novel, I found myself caring less and less about the characters and their story as the film went on. It almost makes you wonder if Berg felt this same fatigue while making it. EVERY SECRET THING shows that you can have a talented filmmaker at the helm directing a talented cast and yet things can still not quite come together.

Overall rating: 2 out of 5

EVERY SECRET THING is now in theaters, On Demand and iTunes