Every Secret Thing

When a toddler disappears, two teenage girls are held responsible in this eerie psychological mystery about the consequences of kept secrets. Eight years ago, these troubled 11-year-olds were convicted of kidnapping and murdering the infant granddaughter of their upstate New York town's first African-American judge. Upon release, obese Alice Manning (Danielle Macdonald) becomes a sullen shoplifter, consistently lying to her overbearing, protective schoolteacher mother, Helen (Diane Lane), saying that she's searching for a job, while her bitter, socially withdrawn partner-in-crime, Ronnie Fuller (Dakota Fanning), works in a bagel shop. Within their small community of Orangetown, the pair do their best to avoid one another. But when a mixed-race 3-year-old disappears, these two ex-cons become the prime suspects for Detective Nancy Porter (Elizabeth Banks) and her partner, Detective Jones (Nate Parker). Complicating matters, resentful Alice claims that the missing child is actually hers, a biracial baby she bore in juvenile detention and gave up for adoption—who ended up with a now-distraught mother (Sarah Sokolovic) and her boyfriend (Common). Based on an unsettling 2004 novel by Laura Lippman, filmmaker Amy Berg's Every Secret Thing is unfortunately flawed, suffering from flimsy, underwritten subplots as it delves into the angst of obesity, mother-daughter issues, interracial tension, and the murky inequities of the criminal justice system. Optional. [Note: DVD extras include deleted scenes (7 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a small extras package for an uneven drama.] (S. Granger)