Parents' Guide to

Disappearance at Clifton Hill

By Brian Costello, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 15+

Clever, quirky thriller has violence, language.

Movie NR 2020 100 minutes
Disappearance at Clifton Hill Movie Poster

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What's the Story?

In DISAPPEARANCE AT CLIFTON HILL, Abby (Tuppence Middleton) has returned to her hometown on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls after her mother's death. Her mother was the owner of a rundown motel on the verge of being sold to the Charles Lake Company, which is owned and operated by the wealthiest family in town. While looking through some old boxes, Abby finds a Polaroid photograph from the fall of 1994. It was taken during a family vacation nearby when, while stepping away to get water, 7-year-old Abby saw a young boy with bloody gauze over his eye hiding in the woods before he was forcibly taken by an angry couple who threw him in the trunk and drove off. Traumatized by the experience and the aftermath -- in which no one believed her, including her older sister, Laure (Hannah Gross) -- Abby became a compulsive liar, a problem that's gotten her into trouble with the police and strained her relationship with Laure. Undeterred, Abby wants to reopen the cold case and find out what really happened. While revisiting the place where the boy disappeared, she meets Walter (David Cronenberg), who literally emerges from the water in SCUBA gear and tells her that he hosts a podcast on true crime conspiracies. Abby's research reveals that the boy was the son of a husband-and-wife magician team who performed on the regional casino circuit. While the boy's death was declared a suicide, the body was never found, and Walter maintains that his death has ties to the depravity of the magician couple and their now adult-son. Abby gets further sucked into the murky circumstances surrounding the death and must find a way to convince Laure and the police that, this time, she's telling the truth.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: Not yet rated
Kids say: Not yet rated

This is an engaging, quirky-dark mystery-thriller in the tradition of Fargo and Blue Velvet. Disappearance at Clifton Hill is filled with clever uses of old and new media (promotional video cassettes, a true crime podcast, etc.) and satisfying plot twists. As a compulsive liar who's now actually on the trail of finding out what really happened before, during, and after she witnessed the traumatic event that led to her becoming a liar, Middleton plays Abby as likable, if damaged, and captures the nuances of the discrepancies between her past and present behavior and the lengths she's going to solve a cold case. Her unreliability is offset by a strong supporting cast, including Gross' portrayal of the skeptical and more together Laure, and legendary director Cronenberg, who delightfully straddles the line between distinguished and kooky in a way you'd expect from a character who's a regional true crime conspiracy theorist podcaster.

Like the upper Midwest in Fargo and Northern California in The Birds, the setting of Disappearance at Clifton Hill -- the Canadian side of Niagara Falls -- is practically a character in and of itself. The casinos, tourist traps, alien-themed diners, and the ever-present Falls themselves set the movie's mood, which is sometimes in sync with the action and sometimes discordant, but always there and always distinctive. There are layers that seem to reward repeated viewings, and, in a genre filled with more than its share of cliched characters, stories, and "plot twists," this is among the best in recent memory.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about mystery-thrillers like Disappearance at Clifton Hill. How is this similar to and different from other movies in which the main character gets into trouble while trying to unravel a mystery?

  • How does the movie use forms of old and new media -- video cassettes, microfiche, podcasts -- to help tell the story? Does it work?

  • How does the movie use plot twists to tell the story? What are some examples of plot twists in other thriller movies?

  • Talk about the movie's violence. Does it serve a purpose, and, if so, does that make a difference in its impact?

Movie Details

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