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There’s a lot of craziness in Dark Crimes, the Jim Carrey-starring drama that recently came to Netflix. Not only does this crime thriller follow a detective investigating an underground sex cult but it also features Carrey trying his best to pull off a Polish accent. Yeah, that’s part of cinematic history now. But as insane as Dark Crimes is, it has nothing on the real life story on which it’s based.
Directed by Alexandros Avranas, Dark Crimes follows Tadek, (Carrey), a Polish detective who’s obsessed with cold case files. When a local author’s graphic and bloody novel starts to sound a lot like the unsolved murder of a businessman, Tadek grows suspicious. What unfolds is a battle of the minds and wills between Tadek and he man he’s sure is guilty, author Kozlov (Marton Csokas).
Carrey delivers a solid performance in an otherwise plodding and borderline exploitative movie. The versatile actor was practically made to brood. But the most frustrating thing about Dark Crimes is that the actual story it’s based on is so much interesting than this drab adaptation.
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There was in fact an author who wrote fan-fic about the graphic murder he committed. In 2000 a small business owner by the name of Dariusz Janiszewski was found dead in a lake with a noose around his neck. Little to no evidence pointed to a killer, and the case went cold. That was until a detective noticed that Janiszewski’s death was eerily similar to the murder chronicled in Krystian Bala’s novel Amok.
Much like the novel portrayed in Dark Crimes, Amok was shockingly perverse and violent. Also its author was very much guilty. In 2007 Bala was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the planned murder of Janiszewski.
That’s not even the creepiest part. According to a police report, evidence was found on Bala’s computer which indicated that he had plans to kill again and that this new victim would be tied to his second novel. David Grann covered Bala’s case in shocking depth for The New Yorker. That article actually serves as the basis for Dark Crimes, and at least in this case the original is much better than the movie.
