Niagra, Falls

One of the great ways to unwind after a full-on day is a good bit of tv detection. Who doesn’t love a bit of murder and mystery with a few twists and turns to keep you enthralled? Do you prefer then a little on the dark side? If so below our article Niagra, Falls about the film Disappearance at Clifton Hill might just be the tonic you need.

When we think of Niagra Falls with think of water and scenery but murder in this highly known town is not what first comes to mind.

But if you love a bit of small-time intrigue then this has the perfect ingredients for a murder mystery with an edge.

Set in the town and following the death of her mother, Abby (Tuppence Middleton), a young woman with a slightly troubled and checkered past, returns to her home. Home is the dilapidated motel her family used to run which is out of date, long past its heyday and up for sale.

Once home her past demons surface and she finds herself drawn once again into a mystery that had haunted her since childhood.

On a family day out with her clan oblivious twenty-five years ago, she sees in the woods around her a one-eyed boy violently abducted.

With not that much seemingly going on in her own life she sets about finding out the truth, confronting both long-buried conspiracies that run as deep as the falls themselves as well as her own inner demons, as the film progresses her demons are slowly revealed and explored whilst her own grasp of reality is challenged.

But she does have an ally; the local town scuba-diving and podcaster who as it so happens is the real-life filmmaker played by none other than David Cronenberg, making a very rare appearance in front of the camera.

Follow along with Abby through the twists and turns that are aided by an air sense of surreal menace, which is added to by cinematographer Catherine Lutes and composers Alex Sowinski and Leland Whitty, and where she meets up with a former lover who is now a policeman, a family of magicians, her doubtful sister and brother-in-law and the millionaire who is buying the hotel.

Director Albert Shin’s story was partly based in part, on his own life; his parents formerly owned a motel in Niagara Falls, where Shin has childhood memories of witnessing what he understood at the time to be a kidnapping. He uses this to build on a film with unsettling details exercised in noir-ish style.

If you enjoyed Niagra, Falls, our article then you can watch on-demand with details below and just to add to the drama then there is a very famous film Niagra, directed by Henry Hathaway, with Marilyn Monroe and Joseph Cotten, filmed at the falls themselves rather than the town. Or why not read a very personal film Moving message here.

Disappearance at Clifton Hill Digital Download from 20th July and DVD from 3rd August