Charlize Theron burns bright in ‘Dark Places’

Hot on the heels of “Mad Max: Fury Road,” Charlize Theron delivers a quietly ferocious turn in “Dark Places” (2015, Lionsgate, R, $20) as an emotional time bomb of a woman who’s unable to come to terms with the past. In writer/director Gilles Paquet Brenner’s uneven but involving adaptation of an early novel by “Gone Girl’s” Gillian Flynn, Theron plays Libby Day, who was only seven years old when her mother (Christina Hendricks) and two sisters were brutally murdered in their rural Kansas farmhouse. After 25 years, Libby begins to doubt that her imprisoned brother (Corey Stoll) is guilty and sets out to solve the slayings herself. The cult of serialkiller celebrity is smartly skewered by Paquet-Brenner but it’s Theron who makes “Dark Places” burn brightly. Extras: featurette.

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Charlize Theron stars in “Dark Places.”