Paquet-Brenner invests the split-time action with some brooding menace and the cinematographer, Barry Ackroyd, does his best to lend some urgency, even as things spiral from suspense into outright silliness.

The film, overall, is fatally uncertain of its identity - never quite certain whether it's a gruesome murder-mystery out to shock us or a heavy, character-based drama about a family torn apart.

All in all, its contrivances might have been indulged more satisfyingly in a TV miniseries.

A hodgepodge of movie-like parts that fail to ever click, 'Dark Places' is a monumental ball-drop on the part of writer/director Gilles Paquet-Brenner.