Disappearance at Clifton Hill: Darkness lies behind Niagara tourist trap in bizarrely entertaining Albert Shin mystery

By Linda Barnard

Rating: B

Nobody actually disappears on Niagara Falls’ famed carnival-like main drag in Disappearance at Clifton Hill, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year with the less-urgent two-word title Clifton Hill.

Perhaps the change was so audiences wouldn’t think they were getting a travelogue about wax museums and mini-golf in this third feature from director Albert Shin (In Her Place), a neo-noir about a 25-year-old mystery and the distrustful woman out to solve it. 

Tuppence Middleton is Abby, who may or may not remember a child murder in Niagara Falls.

The story does center on a disappearance. It doesn’t take place on touristy Clifton Hill, but rather by the Niagara River gorge, which makes the new title a bit of misdirection, that old magician’s trick of diverting attention elsewhere. 

Co-writers Shin and James Schultz have their characters  — including delightfully cheesy magicians The Magnificent Moulins (Marie-Josée Croze and Paulino Nunes) — use that ruse in various forms.

Set amid the wobbly fake fronts of the tourist-trap end of town during the bleak off-season, there’s also a flying saucer-themed diner, a live tiger and best of all, an excellent acting turn from David Cronenberg.

He plays local podcaster Walter Bell, who knows what everybody’s been up to in this town, before and since. He’s a former rescue diver, whose family fished weird and gruesome things from the gorge past Niagara Falls for generations.

Abby (Tuppence Middleton of Sense8) arrives in her former hometown after her mother’s death with plans to re-open her legacy, the now-shuttered Rainbow Inn motel. 

She’s also on a mission, obsessed with clearing up a mystery that’s haunted her from childhood. The film’s opening scenes show seven-year-old Abby and her family on a Niagara River fishing outing. She’s convinced she sees a “one-eyed boy” being kidnapped, beaten and stuffed in a car’s trunk. Perhaps because she wasn’t believed then, or since, and traumatized by her murky memories, Abby has become an effortlessly skilled liar. From fibs to whoppers, she can’t manage to tell the truth about anything. Is this story about a kidnapped boy any different? 

Her younger sister Laure (Mindhunter’s Hannah Gross) thinks so. She tries to keep her sister from spiralling into another manic phase of lies and obsessions. But Abby won’t stop looking for answers to what happened to the kidnapped kid, or lay off her fight with a sleazy local developer she claims bought the motel from her family with plans to rip them off and raze the Rainbow. 

Maybe Over the Falls podcaster Walter Bell, who seems to know where all the bodies are buried in this town, can shed some light?

Shin isn’t shy about laying on quirky details and liberal oddball splashes to make his third film swing from bizarrely entertaining  to dark (helped by an excellent moody score from instrumental group BadBadNotGood). 

It’s also personal for Shin, who grew up in Niagara Falls, where his family owned a motel like the Rainbow. He also has a memory of seeing a kidnapping take place when he was a kid.

Middleton plays Abby with a pleasing note of vulnerability that is often supplanted by a nagging anticipation she’ll tip off the edge. She and Gross have smooth chemistry as estranged sisters. 

Laure would love to believe Abby about something, but just can’t - not even about the one time Abby is being truthful (or believes herself to be). It’s a pleasure to watch these two actors play off each other and to see a film that focuses squarely on female characters.

Shin and Shultz tease the audience along with clues gleaned from the old-school side of research, including library microfilm and ’80s promotional videos.

The final push to get the story to a mystery-solved conclusion is the weakest part of the film. It feels rushed, a ticking-of-boxes path to the finish.

Disappearance at Clifton Hill Directed by: Albert Shin. Starring Tuppence Middleton, Hannah Gross, Marie-Josée Croze and David Cronenberg. Opens across Canada, Friday, February 28.