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...
"Dark Tourist" gets bogged down in insufferably slow-moving scenes - interestingly, when Jim is interacting with others, despite consummate performances from Cudlitz and Griffith.
– Annlee Ellingson,
Los Angeles Times,
22 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" 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
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:
Michael Cudlitz's first leading role is the sole selling point of this repellent character study.