DARKNESS YOU NEVER KNEW HE HAD... "ALL GOOD THINGS"

Oooh I love a good crime story. Especially a true story. As you know, the ghoulish side of me relishes in a good true crime story. Now don’t tut or roll your eyes (that means you Mom) –it’s just a side of me that hasn’t quite grown up. You know, when we were kids we loved to sit in the dark, around a campfire if you grew up in that kind of environment or in a fort made of duvets with torches and tell each other scary stories. It grew up a bit that’s all. But its basic tastes didn’t change. Oh come on. You remember how we all swore those “legends” we told each other “really happened” and the thrill that went down our spines when we thought about it. Now, in the 21^st century the world is “disenchanted” as it were, there is no more magic or mystery. Except, perhaps, that of the human mind and human nature. Which is why, I think, those of us who never wanted to stop believing in monsters and magic have sort of transferred our interests to true crime. A world where the monsters really and truly      are real…

Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst star in the tale of David Marks and his wife Katie. They tell the story of a murder (well, at least one murder, shall we say) and a disappearance. To this day, the film informs us, the case remains open, but there are strong suspicions as to what happened… This is the story of those suspicions…

When they first got married, David and Katie Marks really looked like archetypal star-crossed lovers. He was a senator’s son looking for his place in life, she was a small town girl. They met by sheer coincidence, love blossomed young and strong. Her family was  surprised by their new son in law that hailed from almost a different dimension from them – but not unfriendly. David’s father however, was very quick to point out that “Katie would never be one of them”.  This tension is, as you can imagine, the ignition point for a crisis. A crisis that had been, it might be argued, brewing in the soul of David Marks for a long while… The marriage starts off happily enough, but very soon the veneer begins to crack. The fact that David returns to the family business  - a business that is decidedly on the shadier side of the law – is definitely part of the problem. But it has to be admitted that (thankfully) not all of us react to stress at work the way David did… Under stress, David begins to show his “true colours”… The colours are surprisingly dark…

This film does a very spookily successful job of telling the story of what seems to be a true psychopath – or a man with serious psychopathic tendencies at any rate. I was especially struck by the way the progression of the situation is shown. At the  beginning of the film David seems determined to run away from “it all” – although, it needs to be said, we do not quite understand what “it all” is until much later. One can even imagine – although this is as much my speculation as anything else – David trying  to live a simple life open a store away from the city, marry a small town girl and be a simple man. But who knows, even without the obvious trigger of his “work life” with his family , his deadly tendencies may have crept to the surface…

And I can’t help but feel deeply for poor Kate. Imagine starting off on what seems to be a fairy tale life only to find out that your “other half” is a psychopath… Mind you, violence within marriages that get “kept” from the outside world are by no means few or far between of course. But that is possibly a topic deserving of its own post, not something to be tagged onto the end of a film review.

All good things is a “build the tension slowly and creepily” type of work of film. Not too  gory so ideal for the weak of stomach. Definitely not for the weak of heart though…