This is a gripping docudrama about one of the most controversial murder cases in Australian history. Lindy (Meryl Streep) and her husband Michael Chamberlain (Sam Neill), a Seventh Day Adventist pastor, are visiting Ayers Rock in the Australian outback with their two sons and nine-week-old baby, Azaria. Hearing her daughter cry out in the night, Lindy returns to the family tent in time to see a dingo or wild dog disappearing into the bush. Lindy is convinced the dingo has taken the baby. A search party is organized, but the child is never found.

The Australian public, however, doesn't accept or understand this religious couple's explanation of the tragedy nor their resigned acceptance of it. Instead, rumors spread about ritual religious murders and Lindy's cold-heartedness. The news media fuel the outcry for a trial with steamy speculations about the event. In 1982, Lindy Chamberlain is convicted of murdering Azaria, even though there is still no body, no motive, no weapon, and no clear evidence implicating her.

Australian director Fred Schepisi masterfully probes the demonic dimensions of this modern-day Salem witch trial and the horrific nightmare of suffering, public exposure, and hatred visited upon the Chamberlains. A Cry in the Dark is a chilling drama about a miscarriage of justice in a case created by religious prejudice, media sensationalism, legal chicanery, and police ineptitude. The court's decision was later reversed and Lindy Chamberlain was released. But the tendencies her story revealed remain troubling not only in Australia but elsewhere in the world.