JIM TAHANA doesn't leave much of an impression when he passes you by. But look closer and you'll sense his hunger - the deep hunger of an insatiable American soul - always scanning to devour something - anything that might fill the searing, unexplained void within him. Jim obsesses over the hobby that has been part of his DNA since he was a young boy: grief tourism - the act of traveling with the intent to visit places of tragedy or disaster. Every year his week-long vacations from work are spent going to grief tourist locations in the lives of different serial killers he is fascinated with. This years obsession is Carl Marznap, a mass murder from New Orleans, Louisiana. But this trip is no ordinary vacation as Jim's rancid sexual impulses and weakening grip on reality deteriorate into a violent despair that will ultimately unlock an unspeakable secret festering within him, bringing The Grief Tourist to it's brutal and shocking finale...
Michael Cudlitz's first leading role is the sole selling point of this repellent character study.
– Geoff Berkshire,
Variety,
3 Sep 2013
rotten:
Griffith's vulnerable performance is a standout. But the film's final third seems needlessly graphic.
– Sara Stewart,
New York Post,
30 Aug 2013
rotten:
"Dark Tourist" takes an effectively unpleasant trip down the lost highway of a morbid mind before its bad choices start catching up with it.
– Nicolas Rapold,
New York Times,
29 Aug 2013
fresh:
Griffith can break your heart as a good woman staggering under the weight of life, especially after her character places her last bit of faith in a dangerously damaged man.
– Ernest Hardy,
Village Voice,
27 Aug 2013
rotten:
"Dark Tourist" gets bogged down in insufferably slow-moving scenes - interestingly, when Jim is interacting with others, despite consummate performances from Cudlitz and Griffith.