Disappearance at Lake Elrod (2020)
Disappearance at Lake Elrod, also known as Through The Glass Darkly, is a 2020 Gothic thriller about a small Southern town where two young girls have mysteriously vanished. It premiered at the Frameline Film Festival the same year, recognised for the lesbian relationship at the core of the film which is uncommon for the genre.
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I didn’t know what to expect from this film, because I’d never heard of or seen it before. It begins with our protagonist Charlie stapling a missing poster to a pylon, revealing that her daughter has been absent for a year. Soon after, the daughter of one of the wealthiest families in the town vanishes too - this offers a very interesting class analysis because reflective of the real world, we see the disparity in how resources are allocated to each case based on status.
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Charlie soon returns home and embraces a woman cooking at a stove, revealing to us she’s in a lesbian relationship. It’s so cool to see this inclusivity, and it’s incorporated in a way that feels very natural, while still exploring the constraints of living in a Conservative town where they have to conceal their family dynamic from the town folk.
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She later connects with journalist Amy, who is interesting in selling the story while Charlie still has no success getting the police to open up the investigation again. After asking around, they uncover a trail of violent misogyny at the hands of Trip Carmichael, heir to a distillery fortune and father of missing girl Elodie. It’s learnt that his mother has been obscuring his crimes for years, paying for people’s silence.
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Still unwilling to give in, Charlie sneaks in to the Carmichael house with Amy, finding a reel of camera film with a note. Developing the image, it reveals to be a ransom note held by Elodie, left by the supposed kidnapper to manipulate Trip and his mother. Amy starts to question Charlie’s sanity when she finds a newspaper clipping in the library, informing her that Charlie’s spouse Angela has been dead for 30 years after taking her own life.
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As the cops close in, Charlie goes to the distillery looking for answers, where her daughters body is found in a barrel of whisky. She’s taken into custody and this is when the most incredible twist happens, as Charlie is given a mirror and it reveals her to be much older than we’ve been led to believe, shattering the perception not only she has for herself but also what we the viewer have seen for the first half of the film.
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The truth of the situation is laid bare, as we learn that Charlie’s daughter Lily actually disappeared 30 years before, Angela ending her own life not long after. The trauma of the whole event led her to repress these memories, leading her to think she was still in the same relationship looking for her little girl.
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Our other missing girl Elodie eventually appears, revealing that she’d taken herself into hiding until the perfect moment when she could reveal that her own father had abused her too. Charlie gets shot while defending Elodie, but survives and the film ends with her grounded in reality, finishing the dollhouse she never completed while Lily was alive.
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I’ve unknowingly watched alot of psychological films recently, and I think they work so well because they know how to get under our skin and really capture the audience. Some of this film does feel a bit disjointed, but it works from a perspective of Charlie’s own thoughts unravelling before us and we do get our answers in the end.
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I’d of liked to see a deeper analysis of race within Disappearance at Lake McElrod; it’s touched upon briefly as we’re given a token Black character, and it’s suggested she isn’t made welcome in the local saloon. But this could have been explored much further, especially in a town where the Confederate flag can be seen on the wall, and where there’s already conversations about gendered violence and homophobia.
