So the magicians thought their son was a wimp. Not a crime. Bev Mole kidnapped the kid, but why she locks up her husband with a literal lock and chain in a closet is never explained. Charlie Lake should be about the same age as the missing Alex, but they hint at Charlie being abusive to the kid, as if it were an adult/kid abuse instead of two young classmates. The magicians originally thought the whining liar protagonist was gonna blackmail them. With what? "I know your son was afraid of tigers, so give me money"? A messy poorly written waste.

Disappearance At Clifton Hill: Abby (Tuppence Middleton) returns to her home town on the death of her mother; against her sister's wishes she tries to keep the family motel running. Abby also has dark memories of the kidnapping of a boy she witnessed 25 years before. The problem is that Abby is a pathological liar so unsurprisingly the police and her sister are reluctant to believe this late report. Abby meets up with a local Conspiracy podcaster Walter (David Cronenberg) who believes that a local rich family were behind this and other disappearances. The supposed conspiracy also involves animal trainers. You will begin to question conflicting narratives as this tale unfolds. Some great scenes. we first encounter Cronenberg as he rises from a river pond beneath Niagara Falls, he's also a sort of mudlark diver. Directed/Co-Written by Albert Shin. On Netflix. 7/10.

Watching this film reminds me intensely of an supposed quote from Herodotos about the Spartans. The Samians sent a delegation to Sparta to plead for help and assistance with a very long, rather dull speech. The Spartans told the delegation that the speech had been so long that they forgot the first half of the speech and could thus make no sense of the second half.

That's what this movie was like for me. I kept fading in and out of attention during much of the first half of this movie, sometimes having to rewind several minutes just to catch myself back up, but I could still make no sense of whatever the hell was supposed to be happening here.

A young woman, Abby, seemingly witnessed a child abduction when she was 7. 25 years later as an adult, she suddenly remembers this, and goes to the police to report it. The officer listening to her is pointlessly belligerent and dismissive, and seems to only be listening to her because her stepbrother is there with her, as if she were a child needing an adult sponsor to be taken seriously.

From there, she goes on a bizarre hunt that has many different twists and turns that either go nowhere or make no sense. At one point, she is openly antagonizing some guy named Charles Lake III to such a degree that he's making almost cartoon villain threats against her and she just casually ignores them as if he weren't a rich and powerful land-owning guy who could get her arrested for literally committing actual crimes like fraud and breaking and entering and trespassing.

As well, few of the character actions here make sense, and at one point a major plot swerve is thrown which comes out of nowhere, seems to discredit the protagonist, only to be promptly ignored.

With a whole bunch of seemingly random twists and turns, a vaguely Nine Inch Nails sounding soundtrack, and low levels of dialogue to maintain an atmosphere of moodiness and discomfort, all the mystery doesn't really amount to much of anything. It's not fully clear why certain things are happening or why Abby keeps committing crimes and harassing people.

So incoherent were the events that the ending came almost out of nowhere and proceeded to just give us an expo-dump explaining it all to us in the form of news reports and David Cronenberg's podcast narration.

Watching this the first time around fading in and out like I did I feel like I missed out on some important, but going back and reading the entire plot on wikipedia and re-watching certain scenes, I realize I did not miss anything. I don't know what this was supposed to be.