Today I am going to explain and recap, a recently released interesting thriller movie called Blackwater Lane. It is based on the novel by B A Paris called "The Breakdown ". It revolves around the couple Cassy Anderson and Matthew, who had recently moved into their countryside mansion. Apparently, this place was infamous for being haunted yet they were living in it. It had all the markings like a private unattended lake, good old trees, graves, and wild animals. Here Cassy is a music and drama teacher in a local school whereas Matthew works at an oil rig. Due to this, he is often out of town.
The movie opens on the last day before the summary breakdown in the school where one guy Andrew is presenting his monologue. After this, he starts to chat with Cassy as it seems he has a crush on her. He asks lots of personal questions to which Cassy curiously answers, she recommends a book to read in the holidays.
Here we see her colleague Jhon Collins, who takes her to staff drinks. All the teachers partied pretty late and it was almost 10 PM when Cassy got a call from Mattew. He says he is exhausted so he will go to bed early, he asks Cassy not to take Blackwater Lane on her way home as it's not safe during this hour. At the same time, it started raining heavily hence Jhon offered her help. Cassy declined it by saying she would manage. As she drove away, the weather became worse, to reach early she took the Blackwater Lane route. On the way, she notices a car on the side of the road with a lady inside it. She signals her with indicators but gets no response. It was pouring heavily, visibility was poor hence Cassy assumed she might be just waiting for the rain to stop. Without doing much she moved on.
The next morning, Matthew tells her about a woman's dead body being found on the Blackwater Lane road. Cassy watched this news on mobile where police had an investigation as they considered this a suspicious death. They had opened a hotline for the public to assist.
The next morning, Matthew tells her about a woman's dead body being found on the Blackwater Lane road. Cassy watched this news on mobile where police had an investigation as they considered this a suspicious death. They had opened a hotline for any information from the general public. Here Cassy didn't have the nerve to help the police as all this scared her.
Apparently, some portion of this mansion is under renovation and Matthew is finalizing the contractor. Cassy before leaving the house tells Matthew to hurry up and finish the security locks first. Then she meets her childhood friend Rachel for breakfast. These two besties gossip a lot, Rachel says, gorgeous Jhon still fancies her, even though he has a new girlfriend. Cassy rubbishes this idea and asks her to be supportive of Matthew since historically she didn't like him. Then, these two talk about theatre, Cassy had a call from her agent a week ago with an offer. Rachel wondered whether she still had plans to return to it. Cass says no as she and Matthew now are planning for a baby.
She then mentions another friend Susie, who had invited them for a party night. For which Rachael asks her about the gift. Apparently, she and others had pooled money to buy a gift for Susie and they gave the money to Cass. But Cass strangely didn't remember it. Here it is also mentioned that Cass's mom had an early onset of dementia so Rachel was extra protective of her.
After returning home with gifts, Cass sees a guy with a cap standing on the front lawn. She tells this to Matthew who sees nothing. He terms it as her imagination but Cass was certain that she saw someone. In the evening at the party, Rachel reveals that the woman who was murdered is Jane Walters. She worked at her company, and the day before her death she argued with her. Jane had two twins. Cass too now remembered her; she had met her in one of these parties and exchanged numbers. She had planned to meet her twins the next week for summer classes. Back at home, Cass gets a call, no one speaks, and she hears only the noise. She thinks it to be a wrong call and disconnects it.
The next day Cass watches on TV the appeal of Alex, Jane Walter's husband, for any lead to find his wife's killer. The killer is still free at large, which terrifies her. Strangely she started to feel the presence of someone in this big house, she heard noises, constant missed calls, and wrong calls. We clearly see some shadow figures walking behind her. In her guilt, she decides to pay respect to Jane at her death site. While doing that she sees a golden ring that strangely resembles the one she had with her. Here a wild fox starts to chase her. She fanatically checks her ring which matches perfectly. This disturbs her.
That same night, while taking a bath someone or something tried to drown her. She couldn't get up from the bathtub. She calls Matthew in fear thinking a strangler may be the house. Before Matthew could call cops they showed up at the house with DC Lawson leading them. They had received an anoniums tip of Cass being on the Blackwater lane on the night of Jane's death. Cass wondered about this as how come anyone knew where she was on that day. She admits seeing Jane in the car, didn't realize she could be dead. She apologizes for not disclosing this soon and blames it on anxiety. Lawson noted everything and left.
Later Cass explains the bathtub incident to Matthew, she freaks out again when she sees the kitchen window being open. She clearly remembered closing it. Matthew calms her down and says, it's your anxiety talking. He says he will fix the security locks, and alarms before leaving for the rig on Saturday. Cass is taken aback by hearing this as she doesn't remember any of Matthew's plans. But he insists on sharing this with her three weeks ago. All this makes him conclude that Cass is having some memory issues.
The next morning, Cass calls Rachael and asks her to crash here for weekends to which she happily agrees. Soon Andrew lands up at the front door, he is here to return the book. Cass wondered how could this guy know where she lived. He says her other colleague Harry Freeman told him. He lives just a street across from him, on the other side of Blackwater Lane and he like all the other villagers knew about this old Crawford house. It is one of the oldest houses in the village, infamous for being haunted. Cass laughingly confirms this haunting theory after experiencing it firsthand.
As Andrew leaves, Cass heads to school to attend the meeting called by one Mary. It turns out, that there is no meeting, no one was there except John who was here to give tennis lessons to athletes. He says Mary is out of the country for vacation, he himself had dropped her off at the airport. Cass here insists on getting a text from her for the meeting but strangely it was missing from her phone. It appears she saw something else or remembered something else. These two then talk about Jane where apparently John was her tennis coach. He had a bad experience with her husband Alex who thought she might be having an affair with him.
Cass later returned home where she got Rachael's call. She had canceled her weekend stay here due to a sudden swamp of work. Hence Cass is all alone in this big haunted mansion on a Saturday night. As anyone could guess, paranormal things started happening to her, she saw some shadow figure, and someone tried to choke her to death. She saw taro cards on her table with death at the front. She heard someone calling her name. Her dead mother is a tarot card reader and she thinks it might be her ghosts trying to contact her. All of this is enough for her to call 911. Lawson and other cops rescued her. Here through Lawson, we get to know that Cass was admitted to the psych ward three years ago for mental health issues and she is on medication for that.
Cass for the next few days shifted to a nearby resort where her friend, John listened to what had happened. In their discussion Andrew, getting her address from Harry Freeman who happened to be John's childhood friend. Clearly, Andrew lied about him, it seems he has a crush on Cass and perhaps he may be stocking her. Anyway, Cass ignores this as a teenager's misadventure, and when Matthew came from she moved into the house. After hearing what had happened he calls it hallucinations and an early onset of dementia which makes Cass upset. On the other hand, Rachel is inclined towards the idea of the killer staking her. Cass in her guilt meets Alex, Jane's husband who suspects Jane of having an affair.
His theory is her boyfriend might have killed her for some sick reason. His bet is on John who was giving tennis lessons to her. Cass assures him about John and this intensifies her fear.
The next day Cass and Matthew received a delivery of baby stroller. Cass had no memory of ever ordering one, though she knew, she and Rachel had purchased some other items for her other friend Sheila who is a new mother. Strangely here Matthew claims Cass telling Sheila that she is pregnant. Cass categorically denies this and starts crying. Due to all the recent incidents, Matthew assumes that Cass is going through memory issues and he takes her to her doctor, who writes her condition as early onset of dementia. Cass is heartbroken to hear this, she reluctantly starts on meds.
on the other end, Alex informs Lawson that Jane had told him about someone she knew having an affair. Rather she discovered it accidently and that might be one of the motives.
Cass's condition gets worse, she sees her mom's ghostly image on TV, she is haunted by her voice, a Reven bird has died in her garden, and so on. All this had caused immense stress on her as we see her in an emergency room in the hospital. She overdosed on her medication but she insists otherwise. After a few days, Lawson pays Cass a visit on her attempted suicide and she has another anonymous tip placing Cass on Blackwater Lane after the incident. Cass assures Lawson of her accident, she pleads to her that she just went there to pay her respect. She questions these anonymous tips. She later shows her the ring she recovered from the site which was exactly similar to the one she had. She also assures her that she has no affair with John, which was hinted at by Alex. Meanwhile, the topic of this lavish house comes up when Cass says she got it as an inheritance. This house used to be Rachel's grandfather Mr. Crawford's house. He lost it to some financial scam and Cass's dad bought it from him. After him she inherited it.
A while after this, Cass meets Sussie who starts to gossip about everything. In discussion, another mutual friend Kelly's name came up. Apparently, Rachel had an affair with her husband which led to her divorce. It came as news to Cas as she thought Rachel would do such a thing. While coming back from Sussie's house, someone tries to run her off the road. She manages to escape the plot and tries to complain to cops but Matthew stops her. he terms it as another one of her imaginary episodes.
The next day, Cass learns about two separate contracts for house renovation and one has her signature. the date on the signature was wrong as on that day she remembered being out of town. At the same time, she observes a dead fox on her lawn, it seems someone had killed it and thrown it there.
While having her regular breakfast with Rachel, Cass casually rakes up the issue of friends having affairs. This upsets Rachel as she clearly refuses to acknowledge her affair, which makes Cass suspicious. She notices her second phone and steals it. After reading the messages in it, it becomes clear that Rachel and Matthew were hooking up. They were having an affair for some time and Jane saw them. It was Rachel who killed her, it was her who tried to draw Cass in her bathtub. She planned to paint Cass as a patient with dementia and Matthew helped her with this. all this comes as a shock to Cass who in her grief, discovers the murder knife and commits suicide. After some time Andrew came to Cass's house and saw her lying on the sofa in her blood. He calls 911. later when Matthew arrives he tells him the whole situation which freaks him out. He and Racheal in a panic started looking for that phone. John here sneakily attacks them but gets injured in a fight. Cass was not at the hospital or she had committed suicide, it was all her plan to lure these two here and capture them with the help of John and Andrew. Now, it fails and Rachel ties her to the chair.
Rachel admits that she and Matthew concocted this plan, which made her believe in having breakdowns and memory troubles. Rachel did all this for money, she felt humiliated that Cass's family bought her ancestral house. Her original plan was to make Cass committed to a hospital and naturally, Matthew would inherit her property after that. Now, it's not possible. she decides to kill her which is too much for Matthew. This is out of plan, he gets stabbed while saving Cass, and shortly after that Lawson arrives here to arrest him. Rachel knew Matthew from her college days, she introduced him to Cass and came up with this plan. He never worked on any rig. After finding out about the affair between them, Cass also found a camera hidden across the house. That is how they were watching her. She came up with this plan with the help of Lawson, John, and Andrew. After all this Cass still felt sorry for her best friend and Mattew. If Rachel would have asked her, she would have helped her in some way. With this, the movie ends. It's a generic thriller with relationship drama. The twist is so easy to grasp as to who's the culprit. I guess the movie reflects the society nowadays, where cheating is ok. Everyone wants to be rich quickly.
