Out of the frying pan and into the fire, DARK WATERS is a horror film where the monster is a corporation that presents itself as benign and benevolent, creating jobs for whole communities and manufacturing products used in every home in America.
These products are to make life easier for everybody, a utilitarian Utopia, but the by products create a diseased dystopia, and a conspiracy of concealment that begins with the benign but manifests and metastasises into a malignant and toxic cover up over the forever chemicals used the manufacture of Teflon.
Mark Ruffalo stars as corporate environmental defense attorney Rob Bilott, who has just made partner at his prestigious Cincinnati law firm in large part due to his work defending big chemical companies.
He finds himself conflicted after he’s contacted by two West Virginia farmers who believe that the local DuPont plant is dumping toxic waste in the area landfill that is destroying their fields and killing their cattle.
Bilott has family roots in the West Virginia town of Parkersburg and prompted by pleas from his grandmother, proceeds to make a preliminary investigation. What he sees on the farmland and the surrounding community gives him pause for concern and he seeks clarification from colleagues within the corporate law only to be met with obfuscation and hateful hostility.
Facing career suicide, family conflict and personal health, Bilott hunkers down into what is a David and Goliath battle of denial, delay and litigation fatigue.
That the film does not suffer from fatigue under the weight of tons of transcripts and testimonies is a credit to the filmmakers.
Director Todd Haynes and screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan do a remarkable job in making a compulsive drama out of a mire of technical, chemical, medical and legal information and jargon.
DARK WATERS begins as a compelling whistle-blowing story about regional and national contamination of air and water systems which results in a global contamination of human bloodstreams.
Through the massiveness of this man made catastrophe all of us are invariably linked, affected and infected. DARK WATERS unreservedly deserves to be seen but even more so, demands to be seen.