Screen Daily

Slouching Theron is absolutely convincing as a self-loathing haunted soul with zero ambition. As the town’s “rich slut,” Chloe Grace Moretz gives yet another pitch-perfect performance. Both actresses elevate the material, making a somewhat far-fetched story both believable and enjoyable.

Screen International

Slouching Theron is absolutely convincing as a self-loathing haunted soul with zero ambition. As the town’s “rich slut,” Chloe Grace Moretz gives yet another pitch-perfect performance. Both actresses elevate the material, making a somewhat far-fetched story both believable and enjoyable.

The A.V. Club by Katie Rife

Aside from the A-list cast, there isn’t much to differentiate Dark Places from an especially grim TV movie.

Variety by Peter Debruge

As heroines go, it’s refreshing to get one as complex as this: When psychologically scarred female characters do turn up in thrillers, they’re usually little more than shivering victims who set a group of male cops in motion, but here, Libby does her own detective work, while Hendricks lends star power to the flashback scenes.

The Hollywood Reporter by Jordan Mintzer

This plot-heavy suspense flick loses some of the book’s originality in translation while failing to channel its sense of Midwestern malaise. But it keeps the guessing game going long enough to compensate for some otherwise shallow characterizations, while Theron offers up an earnest and downbeat turn that says a lot with little dialogue

Entertainment Weekly by Chris Nashawaty

It’s never pushed far enough. Instead, Dark Places just becomes an overstuffed, low-simmer potboiler with too many improbable detours and overly convenient twists.

The Playlist by Jessica Kiang

Without the spiky irony of Flynn's first-person writing (the enjoyable Jim Thompson-esque noirisms that pepper the novel, like "I have a meanness in me, real as an organ" occur only rarely) Paquet-Brenner shears the text of any richness, to have it unfold instead in a relentlessly grim manner, less intriguing and evocative than straight-up dour.

Village Voice by Amy Nicholson

[Paquet-Brenner] squanders Dark Places' icky setup for a rote investigation to find the real killer, a revelation greeted not with a "What?!" but with a "Whatever."

Washington Post by Jen Chaney

Paquet-Brenner has assembled a talented cast.... Yet he elicits mostly unmemorable performances from just about everyone involved.

Boston Globe by Ty Burr

Grim, ridiculous, and dull.

Slant Magazine by Chuck Bowen

The payoff is a huge and telling visual howler, summarizing the entire plot with a blithe indifference that will inevitably mirror the audience's.