★ ★ ★ 1/2

It’s a strange title, and a strange film. Otto Preminger (Laura, Anatomy of a Murder) directed this 1965 thriller about a woman whose daughter goes missing in London, and it’s a wonder to watch it unfold. Preminger makes the wise decision of never showing us the young girl. When the detective in charge of the case (Laurence Olivier) begins to doubt that she ever existed, we start to wonder if his suspicions are correct. And yet nearly every supporting character in the film seems to have a dark fetish of some kind, causing us to suspect them of foul play. Bunny Lake is an overlooked film, but quite a masterful one. It has a lot of style, and I appreciated the way it takes its time, slowly revealing its deeper layers, and then finally plunging into the surreal (and possibly absurd). In some ways, it reminded me of The Night of the Hunter. Both films are dark, stylized, and almost dreamlike in their surreality.