Claim: Dark Places is a movie.

Dark Places is a mystery novel by Gillian Flynn published in 2009 . The novel deals with class issues in rural America , intense poverty and the Satanic cult hysteria that swept the United States in the 1980s . Dark Places was shortlisted for the Crime Writers ' Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and won the Dark Scribe Magazine Black Quill Award for Dark Genre Novel of the Year . It was also listed on the New York Times Best Seller List for hardcover fiction for two consecutive weeks . A film adaptation of the novel was released on August 7 , 2015 .