Every Secret Thing

Plot synopsis:
The movie is told in non-chronological order, with present scenes intercut with flashbacks that slowly reveal the details of the past as the movie progresses.
18 year old Ronnie Fuller and Alice Manning have just been released from Juvenile Hall after serving 7 years for the kidnapping and murder of the bi-racial granddaughter of the county's first black judge. When asked about the crime, Alice continually insists that she is innocent, a victim of Ronnie's machinations, including Ronnie planting her jack in the box at the scene of the murder to frame her. In flashback we see the girls walking home from a pool party, when Ronnie sees the baby unattended in a stroller on a porch. Despite Alice's pleas not to, Ronnie takes the baby and runs off with her, insisting to Alice that they can take better care of the baby and that it is theirs now.
In the present Ronnie is working at a bagel shop in town, while Alice spends most of her days apparently aimlessly walking around town eating junk food, but lying and telling her mother she is searching for employment as per her request. Alice also secretly dreams of finding validation through reality TV stardom, and is shown several times practicing a speech about being a "victim" of the justice system. Alice's mother Helen Manning is a teacher at the elementary school, and it is apparent she and her daughter have a contentious relationship. Helen is ashamed of Alice being overweight, her unsophisticated tastes, and her lack of interest in the kind of things Helen likes. It is also shown in flashback that before the kidnapping Alice and Ronnie were forced to hang out and go to the pool party together by Helen, who showed favoritism toward Ronnie in front of Alice, connecting with Ronnie over art and with her more free-spirited attitude.
Two weeks after Ronnie and Alice return home a couple are shopping in a furniture store with their young curly-haired bi-racial daughter, Brittany Lyttle. While the couple are arguing about couches their daughter goes missing, prompting panic. The two detectives assigned to the case that come to visit the parents include detective Nancy Porter, who worked on the Fuller/Manning case, which still haunts and traumatizes her. Soon the connection between the current case and the previous kidnapping becomes apparent, including the resemblance between Brittany and the previous kidnap victim. Porter and her partner question both Alice and Ronnie. Ronnie is evasive and withdrawn, while Alice tries to subtly suggest Ronnie is responsible. Helen Manning is hostile when questioned.
Porter and her partner then dig into the girls lives during juvenile hall and discover some disturbing truths. Ronnie tried to kill herself several times and frequently got into fights. But more alarmingly, it turns out Alice gave birth to a young bi-racial baby girl in prison. Bringing in both Alice and Helen for questioning, the truth begins to unravel. It turns out at age 15 in Juvenile Hall Alice fell into a sexual relationship with a janitor named Rodrigo who worked there, and who was eventually fired when their affair was uncovered. By the time Alice realized she was pregnant it was too late for her mother to force her to get an abortion, so instead her mother forced her into relinquishing the child for adoption. According to Helen, Alice remained fixated on her child, obsessing over it endlessly. In an attempt to placate Alice, Helen lied to her, saying that she had seen her child living with a family in a nice part of town. She said that the girl had beautiful curly hair, and had a heart shaped birthmark on her back. However, unknown to Helen, upon being released from prison, Alice reconnected with Rodrigo, the janitor who had previously impregnated her. Alice’s supposedly aimless "walking" had actually been her combing the town, searching for her child. Upon seeing Brittany in the furniture store Alice took her and found that she had a heart-shaped birthmark on her back. Believing Brittany to be her child, Alice took her with the help of Rodrigo, who then took the child to stay at his mother’s house. Their plan was to keep Brittany there while Alice framed Ronnie for the crime, after which they would go be with their child. After being shown birth certificates that proved Brittany was not her child, Alice was convinced by Porter to take her to Rodrigo's mother's house, where Porter collects Brittany. This is intercut with Ronnie at home in her bathroom, where still overwhelmed by guilt over the original kidnapping and murder, she commits suicide by slitting her wrists in the bathtub. Porter returns Brittany safely to her grateful and tearful parents.
It is revealed shortly after that Alice made a deal with the district attorney, and that all charges against her have been dropped while Rodrigo is arrested for the kidnapping and statutory rape. Porter and her partner watch in disgust and Alice revels in the media attention, and gives the speech she practiced about being an innocent victim of the justice system for the news cameras. Finally, the details of the ending of the first kidnapping are revealed. It shows Ronnie worrying about the baby, and begging Alice to let her take the baby back. Alice is then shown manipulating and forcing Ronnie into strangling the baby, running away as Ronnie does it. Horrified, Ronnie goes to Helen and confesses what has happened. Helen says that she can make sure that Alice is punished equally along with Ronnie, and we discover that it was Helen who gave Ronnie Alice's jack in the box, telling her to plant it at the scene of the crime. Finally, in the last scene we are again shown the porch on the day of the original kidnapping, except this time Alice is shown standing over the baby carriage instead of Ronnie. This implies that it was actually Alice who instigated the whole kidnapping to begin with, and that it was Ronnie who was the innocent tag-along, not Alice.

Tags: murder, flashback

Review:
A three year old child goes missing in a small town where two teenage girls live, girls who had been recently released from prisoned for a previous child kidnapping and murder.
Of the former, it is perhaps not as intriguing as it could be, although admittedly it does have some twists and turns; of the latter it is perhaps more successful where it looks at why a couple of damaged girls and one mother act the way they do.
Director Amy Berg is better known for documentaries such as Deliver Us from Evil and West of Memphis; that might be the reason why her dramatic debut, Every Secret Thing, feels a bit dry and impersonal despite its sordid story and the scabrous themes it handles.
The chain of causes and consequences in the screenplay of Every Secret Thing is interesting, but the film lacks of the energy and expressiveness which would have made it genuinely transcendent.
Berg might have feared her reserved thriller to become a sensationalist TV movie from Lifetime, and because of that, she took a special care with the level of emotions and the volume of the drama, something I truly appreciate...
however, that decision slowed down the impetus of the film a bit, and the final result is an entertaining, but not completely satisfactory, movie.
As for the actors, Elizabeth Banks brings a brilliant work in which she proves her big talent outside the comedy once more; Diane Lane perfectly displays a good level of threat in her character, something completely different to her usual roles as victim or comprehensive wife; Dakota Fanning is used to playing this kind of solemn and tortured characters, but that doesn't make her performance less solid; and Danielle Macdonald is an authentic revelation, simultaneously displaying tragedy, optimism and a certain cruelty.
With a less shy director, Every Secret Thing could have been a much more memorable film; but in its current state, it's a decent movie which preferred narrative moderation over emotional impact.
The mystery of just how evil each of them potentially is just adds to things.For an under-the-radar film it has a pretty strong cast.
Diane Lane, Elizabeth Banks and Dakota Fanning all turn in strong performances and the lesser known actors do a good job as well.
It's also well directed and despite there being almost no action scenes during the 90 minute run time, the film never drags which is always a good sign.
Even more strong of a point considering the movie looks like it took place before social media.
It's a well balanced but very sad story about two girls who become the suspects in a missing persons case because they were convicted of the same crime seven years ago.
Elisabeth Banks and Nate Parker play two cops who catch the case of the missing persons.
Daykota Fanning plays one of the suspects recently released from prison for killing a baby when she was just a child.
It was also a better way to unravel the crime mystery.I really recommend seeing the flick, it's like a an episode of Law & Order Special Victims Unit, but with better cinematography..
Its a solid story about horrible people doing horrible things and ensuring that those around them think they are wonderful.The film was hard to watch and actually left me feeling fairly unpleasant when the credits roll, I can only assume this was director Amy Bergs intention.
If your a fan of great story telling, super believable acting and drama to spare this is for you.I am well aware that I've not actually described anything in the film as the synopsis at the top of the page does that, instead I've decided to describe the quality of the film in both story and direction.
"They've taken a child thinking it's mine, why are you still sitting here asking questions?" After a young child is taken Detective Porter (Banks) begins to investigate two prime suspects Ronnie Fuller (Fanning) and Alice Manning.
These two girls recently were released from juvenile prison for the kidnapping and murder of a small infant.
I do have to admit that it was a good movie and the acting was great.
Overall, a very good movie with a great story and acting but it is a little difficult to watch in parts.
This film tells the story of two eighteen year old girls, who were just released from prison for murder of a child.
They are under suspicion of recidivism because another three year old girl is missing.Nothing prepares me for the emotional intensity of "Every Secret Thing".
Been looking forward to this one for a while and was a bit disappointed to be honest, it could have been exceptional with a few changes.I believe this film is worth a view as long as you are not expecting too much.
Elizabeth Banks is solid as is Diane Lane and the other actors, directing is decent.
Forget the movie.Don't mean to be blunt, but that is reviewer-speak for a film which has great ambitions but never quite gels.
Fanning and Lane, ordinarily two standouts, seems lost to a director -- formerly specializing in documentaries -- who goes out of her way to make each scene "authentic" but in fact ends up making merely them awkward and uncomfortable and atonal.I believe this film will be remembered -- if it is remembered at all -- as another feather in the cap of Elizabeth Banks who seems determined to show Hollywood her range.
I give Every Secret Thing a seven star rating purely based on the fact that I was entertained during the whole movie and that the actors and actresses did a good job.
The story keeps you alert for almost the whole movie and that's perfect when it's a crime / mystery.
I was a bit disappointed by the ultimate ending but nevertheless it was a good story.
You don't figure out the whole plot until the end and that's rare with crime / mystery movies.
Worth Seeing for Lane and Banks But A Mixed Bag. Diane Lane and Elizabeth Banks do the best work in this film, with Lane given an especially difficult role (and to my knowledge her first not altogether sympathetic one).
The film was intelligently scripted, unevenly directed, and for the most part held my interest throughout, more for the character revelations than for the plot points.
Also a quibble, but I think relevant when the filmmakers are striving for realism: when the second young girl has gone missing, only the two detectives seem at all involved in finding her.
Still I recommend it for the work of Diane Lane and Elizabeth Banks..
Two girls, Ronnie Fuller (Dakota Fanning) and Alice Manning (Danielle Macdonald), are the prime suspects of the latest kidnapping.
A tense exchange between Jones and the missing girl's mother's boyfriend Devlin Hatch (Common) makes for good drama..
Plot gimmicks are all the rage in TV and movies today - twists and explanations once reserved for "immoral" (or properly amoral) roadshow exploitation films in the '30s and '40s (when there was a Production Code limiting mainstream cinema content) are now commonplace.These crutches to fool or confuse an audience in the quest for a "surprise" ending (or series of anticlimactic endings) sink the promising film EVERY SECRET THING, a title which heralds the use of several deus ex machina gimmicks that masters of suspense and mystery like Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie would have blue penciled away before publication.Another warning was opening credit Starz Digital Media, implying this movie is not a film but rather what we used to call a TV movie back in the day before ancillary media morphed into primary outlets.
Noted in IMDb as a pet project for actress turned producer Frances McDormand, I will not quibble with its fine intentions, only with the lousy execution.Structurally film gets off to a rocky start with a prologue that features "3 days earlier" card (cuing first of perhaps 50 flashbacks, some useful, many extraneous storytelling crutches), and then the key events setting up the tale are all presented in newspaper headlines during the credits sequence.
Basically two 11-year old girls are sent to prison for kidnapping and murder of a Black infant girl, and film proper picks up with their lives 7 years after, out of stir and adjusting to the outside world.As adapted by Nicole Holofcener and shakily directed by Amy Berg, movie turns into a suspenser and police procedural, revolving around both who (really) dunnit and also the psychological why?
As 18-year olds the two contrasting girls are played by star Dakota Fanning as Ronnie, not helping her cause in transition from child star to adult actress in a one-note, buttoned-up performance as the seeming "dom" of the femme couple and Danielle Macdonald as Alice, giving a very strong, central turn as the seemingly self-loathing obese "sub" of the pair.Structural resemblance (minus all the sex, of course) of the early reels to one of the hundreds of popular Lesbian psychodramas in the video market is evident, as all the characters are female.
Men are later introduced into the mix in subsidiary roles, of which Common, the famous rapper, gives the movie's best performance as the not-by-blood parent of a missing girl whose disappearance at a furniture store immediately brings our anti-heroine pair under suspicion.
Both kidnappings involve interracial couples and their female offspring, a quite interesting mystery clue.Cop on the new case is Elizabeth Banks, obviously cherishing a cast-against-type tough (yet still vulnerable) lady role, but hampered by a poor plot gimmick that makes her the same cop who was traumatized by finding the very same dead girl that put Ronnie & Alice in jail seven years earlier (though no one in the cast knows this -only Banks and the audience).
Other central figure (and the reason I wanted to see the movie in the first place) is lead actress Diane Lane, given an unplayable role as a teacher who is Alice's mother that ends up with her delivering exposition on several key twists, none of them credible, but the ostensible "solution" to the mystery in the final reels.I cannot go into too much detail without exploding several spoilers, but suffice it to say that unlike a legitimate, classical mystery structure (think the Clue board game at the extreme) there is a key character not introduced in the film proper but only in the myriad flashbacks later on that is necessary to make any sense of what happened.
I suppose that 21st Century audiences massaged by the hit acronym TV procedurals ("CSI", "NCIS" plus granddaddy "Law & Order") or influential head- scratcher series "Lost" are used to this, but it ruined the movie for me.Further detraction is use of the familiar literary trick: "the unreliable narrator", in this case not RASHOMON but rather intentionally misleading flashbacks early on to represent the point-of- view of untruthful characters, later contradicted by other characters' flashbacks and finally cleared up by the revelations involving personages we never hear from at all, but are merely cogs in the flashback structure.
I saw the movie in a theater so I can hold it to a higher standard.Berg and company also err in using the horror-film format of endless tension and no release - a gimmick that rather than keeping me on the edge of my seat (as intended) just bored me to death.
Real people, real situations, real tragedies.The director, Amy Berg, has previously directed "West of Memphis" and "Deliver Us from Evil", documentaries relating to crimes not completely unlike things that happen here.And the tragedies that occur here, separated in time by seven years or so, are likewise quite believable.
Every Secret Thing is a mystery drama about the previous murder of a young girl and the search for a currently missing girl.
It mainly relates to the two young adults who were found guilty of the death of a young girl 7 years previously and who are now suspects in the current missing girl case.
It uses flashbacks very effectively to show what could of happened during the previous murder so you don't really know who was responsible until the end of the film.
The strong cast featuring Diane Lane, Elizabeth Banks, Dakota Fanning and Nate Parker are excellent but special mention goes to Danielle Macdonald who I'd never heard of previously who does a brilliant job as Alice Manning.
Did you ever think about that?""Every Secret Thing" is a meager attempt to create a thriller full of suspense.
Usually a story about missing children makes you feel uncomfortable and tells about the most terrible thing that can happen to you as a parent.
The two teenagers Alice (Danielle Macdonald) and Ronnie (Dakota Fanning) aren't really creepy or frighteningly.
Even though it turns out that one of them has a morbid, gloomy mind.At the age of 11, the two young girls decide to take a baby, sitting in an abandoned stroller on a porch, with them (and she's also a granddaughter of the first black judge in the community), after they attended a disastrous birthday party.
Alice is a chubby girl and Ronnie is an introverted child who also happens to have a sharp tongue.
You don't need to be a brilliant mind to know who they'll suspect again when another baby disappears in the same community.I thought this movie failed in several areas.
Nancy Porter (Elizabeth Banks), a female detective who's like a sort of adult version of Nancy Drew, is motivated enough to solve this mystery.
In other words, the whole movie lacked some true tension.The only one who could captivate me with her acting, was Fanning (The last time I saw her acting was in "War of the Worlds" as a very young girl).
For me she was also the only credible character.Even the strange twists at the end can't avoid this melodramatic thriller ending up at the same level as most average TV movies.
The mysterious beginning, the shocking subject and the sometimes superb acting eventually couldn't prevent it to become a clichéd thriller with no real surprises.
A CHALLENGE: Try making a film like this is modern day Britain, after what happened to Jamie Bulger in the early 90's.
Regardless, the baby is murdered, the girls are captured, and spend the next seven years in juvie.Flash forward to the present, and both have been released.
And guess who the prime suspects are?Every Secret Thing gives us two very distinct personalities, and slowly changes our perception of them, and the people in their lives, as it proceeds.
It raises interesting questions about the justice system, how responsible kids that age are for unspeakable crimes and the accountability of parents in such matters.The ending will split opinion, but I admired the realism of it.
Frances McDormand acts as a first-time executive producer in this psychological thriller entitled Every Secret Thing.Diane Lane,Elizabeth Banks,Dakota Fanning,Danielle Macdonald,Colin Donnell and Nate Parker stars in this film that tells the story about a detective conducting an investigation on missing children in a small town.Detective Nancy Porter remains haunted by his inability to save the life of a missing child from two children,Alice and Ronnie.After eight years,he finds herself conducting an investigation on another missing child after the two children convicted of the crime eight year ago were released from juvenile detention.She and her partner are determined to never let the current missing child from dying in the hands of the two released juveniles.They start investigating the mothers of the said children particularly Helen,the mother of Alice.
Then they begin to discover a lot of secrets particularly the events of the crime that had happened eight years ago.Well,this was a predictable thriller wherein everything was explained in the end.Also,we get to see a somewhat confusing movie considering that it was told in a non-chronological order to add complexity to a somewhat simple crime story.In the end,the viewer is treated to a film wherein the least expected suspect to commit the crime is evidently guilty all along.So it was basically predictable especially when Diane Lane's character Helen starts explaining things.One thing that is noticeable is the fact that we are treated to a female-centered crime story wherein the criminals,the detectives,the suspects,the victims,victims' relatives and the missing links are all female characters..
Did Dakota Fanning's character kill herself in the tub?
2. We don't see the dead child or anything recognizable in the dark hiding place so we have no idea what Elizabeth Banks' is seeing - we are only guessing and surmising thru the whole thing.
3. Why is Diane Lane's character, so fawning over Dakota Fanning while trashing her own daughter constantly?
or did Dakota Fanning actually do something (what?) to kill it because she was bullied by Alice?To me, if you are bored, give this a viewing, but I certainly wouldn't waste my time wanting to watch it again..
Two young misfit girls take a crying baby, care for it, and then kill it.
Her mom (Diane Lane) is best friends with other girl, Ronnie (Dakota Fanning) who is quiet and reserved.
Elizabeth Banks plays the detective investigating the case.
She was also the officer who found the dead child seven years ago.The film includes smartly placed flashbacks.
This film definitely borders on the macabre.Two little brats, equally disturbed, kidnap a baby and literally let it die and are sent to a reformatory for what they have done.Fast forward seven years later: The girls are released and begin telling varied tales which of course leads to one blaming the death of the child on the other.When a second inter-racial child is snatched, naturally suspicion arises regarding our two females.Diane Lane is in a most perplexing character.
Where is the shame that the Lane character should have for a daughter doing such a thing?
She states that with a life gone, she can now bring life to her child.On top of all this, the other girl is eventually shown to be the real culprit and Alice is totally exonerated.