Disappearance At Clifton Hill is a funhouse, mirror maze of a film. Beginning with a flashback we see a family fishing along the Niagara river when the youngest, Abby, wanders off and witnesses something she cannot explain. A pair of thugs wrestle a boy into a car and drive off. Puzzled by the incident, the memory becomes a lurid footnote from the past as Abby (Tuppence Middleton) returns to Clifton Hill years later only to have the memory haunt her further. Blurring the lines between memory and fact writer-director Albert Shin’s noirish love letter to Niagara Falls treats us with pulpy atmosphere, acres of wet pavement and neon, and a palpable sense of a town choc-full of untold stories.

Arriving back into town Abby takes over management of her parent’s once-lucrative roadside motel. With the local millionaire family eager to snatch up the property, Abby’s sister Laure (Hannah Gross) tries to facilitate the deal to go through, closing a chapter in her and Abby’s lives. Yet something seems amiss. Remembering the faint memory of a boy being kidnapped along the Niagara River, and a suspicious tie to the family attempting to buy her motel, Abby resists and surreptitiously investigates. Along the way she meets Walter (David Cronenberg), a local conspiracy theorist who goads her along and feeds her just enough information to keep her from giving up uncovering the mystery of the kidnapped boy from her childhood.

Did we mention that Abby is a compulsive liar?

Set against the neon-colored tourist boulevard of Clifton Hill, Shin and co-writer James Schultz craft a nasty puzzle box of a noirish mystery. Through the lens of an unreliable narrator, we revisit a town of artifice and illusion to solve a crime that may or may not have a resolution. It’s a cruel trick to play on those looking for a clean finish but that isn’t what Shin and Schult are after. We are asked to visit a town steeped in lore and rich with atmosphere. We are not asked to sink our teeth into the details of the plot so much as we are invited to savor the notes of a riddle wrapped in an enigma.

Catherine Lutes lensing is superb. Capturing the different notes of Clifton Hill from a visual perspective we get the flashy, the showy, the real and the behind-the-scenes in one film. We must also note the production design by Chris Crane and art direction by Joël Guzman that captures the look of a world that is at once showy and propped up by fantasy.

Yes, see Disappearance At Clifton Hill. This is a film that dives deep into a place that inspires as many dreams as nightmares. Anchored by a solid performance from Middleton, lush production, and solid writing, we have a delicious mystery that confounds as much as it beguiles.

8 out of 10 stars