The film really needed more invention, an issue accentuated by the poorly handled left turn it takes half-way through. As well as horror, you’re well known for comedy roles on the likes of How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory. Which is hardest to pull off? Is it harder to make people laugh or scare them?

When another young girl goes missing in the town, Charlie becomes adamant in her belief that the case is related to the unaccounted disappearance of her daughter and starts to personally investigate the incident, bemoaning the apparent incompetence of the local police department and citing a conspiracy. However, as evidence begins to emerge, Charlie becomes a prime suspect herself and takes up the assistance of investigative journalist Amy (Shanola Hampton).

Meet the Mutants of TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM Ahead of Monday’s Home Video Release

It’s okay to have differences of opinion. But we are getting pushed to a breaking point. And particularly my country: we’re in this sort of cold civil war, for ideological reasons. This tribalism is terrifying to me. But I choose to see the glass half full, and I choose to be an optimist, and I choose to believe that we can care. We can give a damn about each other. The whole point of having a “big reveal” in a mystery movie is to draw you deeper into the story, not have you wondering whether the cameras rolled too soon on a screenplay that needed a few more drafts.

When it comes to twists and turns, some feel predictable although some are genuinely surprising. Meanwhile, some narrative developments and information pieces are quite unclear. Frequent contrivances do little to help. Narrative developments rarely feel natural or unforced, with information appearing exactly as and when it is needed. For the most part, the story unfolds from one place to the next. Consequently, character and narrative struggles never come across like realistic struggles, since they never last for long and we are never given a sense that the uncovering of vital information is difficult. And yet, the rallying cry that “we are close” towards the finale seems almost laughable when Amy proceeds to suggest an almost random person from the town. Verdict And that’s not the only spot of bother in Disappearance at Lake Elrod (also known as Through the Glass Darkly), a strained, cliché-ridden by-the-numbers missing person mystery that can’t make all the pieces of the puzzle snap together the way a good mystery should. Charlie’s standing with the community only worsens when another young girl goes missing. Already being blamed for the disappearance of her daughter, this latest victim – the daughter of toxic man-child Chip Carmichael ( Michael Trucco) – uncovers old wounds for the eternally hurting Charlie, and the more she tries to inject herself into the case, the more broken her psyche becomes.

THERE’S SOMETHING IN THE BARN (2023) Review

this mystery takes one mother through endless nights full of shaky social terrains where promises aren’t kept"

Charlie ( Robyn Lively, Twin Peaks) is convinced that there is a connection between her own missing daughter and another girl’s disappearance. Something is happening to the girls in Elrod, Georgia and Charlie won’t stop searching for the truth. Damn the consequences. But their intensely busy schedule, with multiple new projects already lined up,means ‘their slate is so full …. I don’t know how they would find the time [for Midnight Mass 2]’. Yeah, Midnight Squid Games Mass. That’s the one thing… Our producers were half joking… like, ‘Damn it, Netflix! Really? Did have to put Squid Game and us on the exact same day?’

STAR TREK (2022-) #14 Review

Flanagan and production partner Trevor Macy have the ‘Midas touch’ when it comes to creating films and TV series, he says, ‘and as an actor you dream about a scenario where you can be in a creative circle like that’. I read that book, cover to cover. I just absorbed it. And I went a deep dive into YouTube videos and interviews with people from that island. So I can understand the mentality, because this character and these people are very specific. The way Mike and his writing team wrote them is very specific. That community was super important for me to represent and to get right. That was the scaffolding of the character. It’s based on a real island that’s off the coast of Virginia called Tangier. There is a fishing community there. There’s book called Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island. Call me simple, but a jumpscare. I love a great sting: loud music, loud noise and in the moment you don’t expect it. That’s the dopamine that I seek out when I’m seeing a horror show. As a small town mystery and a psychological thriller, the film does little wrong, although this is arguably because it rarely sets foot into new territory. In the places where innovations are attempted, these often feel mismanaged. The ones that work are underutilised, whilst the ones that do not are downright ineffective.