The trailer just landed for thriller and bio-pic Dark Crimes, the new film starring Jim Carrey. The film is based on a real-life true crime – a murder committed in Poland in 2000.

The case went cold for years, until a detective found clues to the killing in fictional novel from Krystian Bala, published three years after the victim’s death. Bala had written a version of the real-life murder into his book. Indeed, the book contained facts that only the murderer could have known. Bala later received 25 years in prison for the murder. In 2008 writer David Grann wrote a New Yorker story about the case. It is this article from which the new film takes its story.

Featuring a hirsute Carrey in his first lead role in four years, Dark Crimes lives up to its title. Carrey plays Tadek, the kind of loner detective given to solemn silence we’ve seen before. Carrey brings his characteristic intensity to the role and there’s a real dark energy to his performance. This is Noir at its blackest, and this is his most serious role in years.

The tagline in the trailer reads ‘Every city has an underworld’ and it is Tadek’s descent into a grey world of S & M clubs, steel gates and brutality that is essayed here. Carrey moves through the trailer with a grim determination that is highly compelling.

Also starring are Charlotte Gainsbourg, (Antichrist) and a thrillingly intense Marton Csokas (The Equalizer, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter). The latter plays successful writer Kozlow, whose novel contains clues to the grisly murder Tadek is investigating.

Csokas is always a pleasure to watch and brings a real demonic energy to the sadistic bad guys he so often plays. Here, as a twisted writer haunting sex clubs and dungeons with a secret penchant for homicide, he’s perfect.

Alexandros Avranas (Miss Violence) directed the movie. Dark Crimes opens in cinemas on May 18th, 2018.