It’s almost surprising that abnormal neo-noir hasn’t seen more of an obnoxious resurgence post-“Twin Peaks: The Return.” Audiences have been re-introduced to its flavor, here and there, with films like David Robert Mitchell’s languorous and controversial “Under the Silver Lake” or the strangely unsung Hollywood mystery, “Gemini,” starring Lola Kirke in an underrated performance. Canadian filmmaker, Albert Shin has moved weird noir out of Los Angeles and into a slightly more rural setting, Clifton Hills — one of Niagara Falls most popular tourist locations — for his tonally confusing, spooky conspiracy thriller, whose title also shares the name of its crooked little casino town.
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Starring Tuppence Middleton (“Sense8”) as Abby in a subtle performance that definitively proves the lead actor’s charisma, “Clifton Hill,” has more a little more in common with David Lynch-level weirdness than it does other hard-boiled classics of the mystery genre. The film doesn’t follow a detective or private investigator, but rather a young compulsive liar who never grew up, let alone moved past the trauma the town inflicted on her as a small child. When Abby was young, she witnessed a boy with one eye being kidnapped near the riverbank. Abby’s family, including her older sister Laure (Hannah Gross, “Mindhunter”) never believed her story and evidence in an old photo from that fateful fishing trip still haunts Abby; to this day, no one seems to trust a word she says.
When Laure and Abby’s mother passes away, the siblings inherit her decrepit motel. Abby moves back to Clifton Hill and starts crashing there, but turns away all potential patrons, telling them “no vacancy,” even though it’s off-season and the parking lot is completely empty. Wandering by the river one day, a scuba diver, played by David Cronenberg, (yes, you read that right) pops up out of the water, claiming one might find firearms, wedding rings, and drowned conspiracies.
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The kooky old-timer’s name is Walter; he owns the local diner in the shape of the U.F.O. and hosts a podcast called “Under the Falls” from the back room of Niagara’s “only flying saucer.” When Abby tells Walter what she witnessed as a child, he suspects she may have been present at the abduction of the son of the miraculous Mr. & Mrs. Moulin (Paulino Nunes and Marie-Josée Croze), a celebrity duo famous for their magic shows with fearsome tigers (think a Niagara Falls, Siegfried and Roy). The missing boy’s case was eventually ruled a suicide. But, Walter was present on-site back when the crime occurred and the diver never believed that convenient story.
While the narrative gets curiouser and curiouser the tone of the movie is confusing to pin down. The picture clearly knows what shape it wants to take but can’t decide how much to lean on its own idiosyncrasies, or score, for that matter; the jazzy arrangements being equal parts atmospheric and distracting. It’s a labyrinth built off eerie, but implicit, ideas that read as half-empty and underdeveloped. The script isn’t confident enough to commit to its own oddities. The aesthetic approach is peculiar but easily digestible. Some shots are composed excellently; other shots are clearly reaching for excellence. One is never quite sure if the style going for emotionally absent or if Shin chasing more surreal Lynchian black comedy.
“Clifton Hill” either assumes that the audience is intelligent enough to connect its mystery dots themselves or is slightly unaware that the big ideas aren’t being fully communicated through its storytelling puzzle box. Given Abby’s psychological profile, distinguishing the difference between truth and personal conspiracies is deliberately made ambiguous. Her complexities as a character make up for some of the film’s shortcomings, however. The role is slightly underdeveloped, with backstory being purposefully withheld, but Middleton is really solid and carries the film, shifting between anxious, obsessed and a series of other personality masks that the audience is always meant to be somewhat suspicious of.
What’s also odd though is that, overall, the conspiracy at large isn’t that more convoluted than a typical murder mystery, only the moving pieces themselves are. For all its strange and specific flavor, “Clifton Hill” is too tame and tepid to truly work as weird noir. The film itself is no where near as eccentric as Cronenberg’s character (which feels like a role that was deliberately written with a David Lynch-type in mind for its inhabitant; in one scene he tells Abby to “Walk two blocks and look for a blue Toyota,” – his dialog being coded in abstract semiotics). It’s all a bit noir by the numbers, but it does have a distinct personal stamp, being inspired by Shin’s own trauma and experiences living in the same tourist town in his youthful days. The final scene of the movie is its biggest head-scratcher. On one hand, it makes for a more thoughtful narrative thesis than one might expect, but on the other, it plays like a tiger chasing its own tail, almost defeating its own purpose. [C/C+]
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