Susan Granger’s review of “Every Secret Thing” (Hyde Park Entertainment)
When a toddler disappears, two teenage girls are held responsible in this eerie psychological mystery about the consequences of the secrets we keep.
Eight years ago, these troubled 11 year-olds were convicted of kidnapping and murdering the infant granddaughter of their upstate New York town’s first African-American judge.
When they’re released, obese Alice Manning (Danielle Macdonald) becomes a sullen shoplifter, consistently lying to her overbearing, protective schoolteacher mother, Helen (Diane Lane), that she’s searching for a job, while her bitter, socially withdrawn partner-in-crime Ronnie Fuller (Dakota Fanning) works in a bagel shop.
In this small community of Orangetown, they do their best to avoid one another since their incarceration. But when another mixed-race three year-old disappears, these young women become the prime suspects of Detective Nancy Porter (Elizabeth Banks) and her partner, Detetective Jones (Nate Parker).
Complicating matters, resentful Alice claims that this missing child is actually hers, the bi-racial baby she bore in juvenile detention and gave up for adoption. And there’s little time devoted to the abducted toddler’s distraught mother (Sara Sokolovic) and her boyfriend (Common).
Based on an unsettling 2004 novel by Laura Lippman, it’s adapted by Nicole Holofcener (“Enough Said”), executive produced by Frances McDormand, and directed by documentarian Amy Berg (“West of Memphis,” “Deliver Us From Evil”).
Flawed by under-written subplots and superficiality, this police procedural utilizes flashbacks to delve into the angst of obesity, mother-daughter issues, inter-racial tension and the murky inequities of the criminal justice system, culminating in a twist ending that isn’t conclusive.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Every Secret Thing” is a flimsy, foreboding 5, a female-centric crime thriller.
