Even though the movie "Every Secret Thing" seemed to gain a lot of bad and mediocre reviews on popular sites such as Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB, I have to admit that I still enjoyed it. It was by no means perfect, but I think that there were elements of the movie that made both the plot and some of the characters fascinating.

Every Secret Thing is the first movie production of Academy Award winner Frances McDormand. The movie is also based on a novel of the same name by author Laura Lippman.

Alice Manning and Ronnie Fuller are two troubled young ladies who had just been released for the kidnapping and murder of a young African American baby. Thus when a three year old biracial girl is kidnapped in the presence of her parents, fingers begin pointing in their direction.

As soon as Detective Nancy Porter is assigned to the case, she notices similarities between the kidnapping of the baby years before and the kidnapping of the three year old. Her biggest fear becomes that another child will die if she doesn't find her in time. Like everyone else, her suspicions lay with the two previous suspects, Ronnie Fuller and Alice Manning. However, as time passes and everything becomes clearer, she begins to realise that the case might be much more complex than she thought.

Even though I personally liked the movie, I can understand why others gave it a mediocre rating because it just wasn't that great. Nevertheless, if you take a look at all the people who were involved in the making of the movie, its failure becomes puzzling. What made Every Secret Thing a bad movie?

I came up with two main reasons. The main one is that the movie just can't decide what it wants to be about. Therefore I feel as if it's all over the place much of the time and comes off as being unfocused and indecisive.

For example, I've learnt that when writing a story or a screenplay and even making a short film less is generally more. Therefore a screenplay might translate better to screen if it attempts to focus on the entire story from one direction or perspective.

Every Secret Thing on the other hand tries to do way too much. It focuses on Alice's issues with her weight, Detective Nancy Porter's feelings about the case and its effect on her personal life and everything else but the case itself. As a result everything also seems very sluggish.

The other reason why the movie wasn't very good was because I didn't think that we got to know the characters well enough for them to seem "real" and "down-to-earth".

For example, there was the young woman Alice who I believed had the potential to be a formidable antagonist. While watching the movie it's easy to pick up that she both hates and envies Ronnie. However, we just don't get enough information about her character to make her into that much of a rounded character, and so she falls flat.

The acting was nothing less than masterful. I had the privilege of seeing well known talented actors such as Elizabeth Banks, Diane Lane and Dakota Fanning give stellar performances in some of the main roles.

I thought Dakota Fanning stood out the most even though I didn't think that she had much to work with as an actress. I loved the way that she portrayed Ronnie who has changed after her incarceration into something of a miserable and hollow person.
The movie's twist also did not have the effect that it should have and I guess that was because the storyline dragged out too long and some things became too obvious to be surprising anyway. As a result what ends up happening is that since the movie was heavily dependent on the twist to redeem it in the end, it's becomes of the tragic mistakes that makes it fall flat.

I'm on the fence about recommending this movie because even though I liked it, a lot of other people didn't. Additionally I think it had enough potential that it might have just turned into Academy Award material had the writers and director taken a lot more time and care with the story.