A lonely man keeping company with a bottle of whiskey in his dingy trailer answers the pounding on his door in the middle of a stormy night to find a rain-soaked young woman looking for help. Will he give it to her?
Impressive two-hander from Australia, with strong performances that avoid being stagey. I'm not the best judge of cinematography, but the lighting and framing create the necessary claustrophobia in a tight location with plenty of close-ups, and the editing maintains a good pace. There are fleeting flashbacks, but the tension is kept steady, with only mild relief in a couple of nicely judged scenes - especially the card game - and a subtle vein of irony in the dialogue.
The outstanding element of the production is the sound design, with the storm groaning and creaking and clanking like an angry ghost outside the trailer, while the moaning strings of the score echo the melody of the spooky Sleepwalk song on the tinny radio. And plenty of wheezing and bubbling and tinkling ... like being woken up by a nest of starlings.
The Aussies have taken a seriously good turn in their horror productions: I'm thinking of Talk to Me and the brilliant Run, Rabbit, Run, and this movie starts out with the same promise. However, in the end it's just a morality tale with a touch of preachiness, and while there is a clever perspective shift in the climax it doesn't quite make the grade of the earlier movies. Perhaps it's just me, but I prefer this sub-genre to find its strength in the weirdness of the perpetrator, and not in the pathos of the victim.
Overall: When we come to remember this era of Aussie horror with the same fondness as J-horror, this will deserve an honourable mention.
Impressive two-hander from Australia, with strong performances that avoid being stagey. I'm not the best judge of cinematography, but the lighting and framing create the necessary claustrophobia in a tight location with plenty of close-ups, and the editing maintains a good pace. There are fleeting flashbacks, but the tension is kept steady, with only mild relief in a couple of nicely judged scenes - especially the card game - and a subtle vein of irony in the dialogue.
The outstanding element of the production is the sound design, with the storm groaning and creaking and clanking like an angry ghost outside the trailer, while the moaning strings of the score echo the melody of the spooky Sleepwalk song on the tinny radio. And plenty of wheezing and bubbling and tinkling ... like being woken up by a nest of starlings.
The Aussies have taken a seriously good turn in their horror productions: I'm thinking of Talk to Me and the brilliant Run, Rabbit, Run, and this movie starts out with the same promise. However, in the end it's just a morality tale with a touch of preachiness, and while there is a clever perspective shift in the climax it doesn't quite make the grade of the earlier movies. Perhaps it's just me, but I prefer this sub-genre to find its strength in the weirdness of the perpetrator, and not in the pathos of the victim.
Overall: When we come to remember this era of Aussie horror with the same fondness as J-horror, this will deserve an honourable mention.