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Coming Home in the Dark

Here's a brutally tense, Kiwi kidnap thriller from first time feature director, James Ashcroft. A family of four - mum, dad, two teenage sons - drive to the (mostly) uninhabited mountains, somewhere in NZ. A relaxing holiday is the plan. Enter two ne'er-do-wells, Mandrake and Tubs (Daniel Gillies and Matthias Luafutu), and things start to get messy. Mandrake's line sums up the dread - "That point right there is probably going to be the time you wished you'd done something" (or words to that effect). What follows is surprising and pretty hard to forget.

As this kind of genre film goes, Coming Home in the Dark hits all the likely beats. Victim can't react for obvious fear. Stakes increase. Baddies get more desperate and cruel. Rapprochement is attempted. Revenge is promised. Escape is close but wait, oh no, it isn't. And so on. This film differs from something like Wolf Creek in that there's a simmering, underlying secret that links the victims and the perpetrators. The slow unpicking of this mysterious backstory is delicately worked through, interspersed with moments of real shock and violence.

Erik Thomson and Miriama McDowell play the parents, with real brothers Billy and Frankie Paratene as the lads, and the panic and helplessness is beautifully played, especially by McDowell. But the star turns are from Gillies and Luafutu. Their relationship, and the significance of 'stumbling upon' the family, is wonderfully teased out. There's a scene in a semi-abandoned car race track where you can just about feel where the atmosphere of their partnership changes. The 'home' of the title is not what it first seems and the opening and closing shots hint to a poignancy that isn't often found in these kinds of films. If this write-up reads like I'm stepping on eggshells, that's about right. This is best seen devoid of any knowledge of the film. I've probably already said too much.

Coming Home in the Dark opens at the Luna Leederville on Sep 9th.

See also:

Not really big on these kidnap films but Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners (2013) is a fine example, and for more Kiwi accents (but no other similarity), have a look at Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi's What We Do in the Shadows (2014 film and 2019 TV show).

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