Things eventually escalate, the pressure valve of pent-up emotions building and releasing. But it’s a long and demanding ride to get there, full of solemn looks and thousand-yard stares.
Bring Her Back is lighter on thrills and spills for the midnight movie and heavy with thick, abject horror and despair, featuring an intensely disturbing performance from Sally Hawkins.
Tamahori builds a largely credible aura, supported by uniformly strong performances and Gin Loane’s classy cinematography. But The Convert is one of those films with occasional moments that make you go “huh?”
You’ll Never Find Me builds a profoundly creepy and spiralling momentum before everything comes together in a shockingly brilliant final act with twists that nobody will see coming – or be able to forget.
This film drips with pot boiler-ish twists and turns, and is saturated with genre machinations – engaged, like many mystery scripts, in surprising and one-upping the viewer. But developments in the last act especially – and there are no spoilers here – contain some tough pills to swallow.
There are many provocative images: a winking statue of Jesus crucified, for instance, and occasions in which the “new boy” experiences stigmata. But Thornton revels in ambiguity and has no desire to provide viewers a clear pathway to understanding.
The cast, in weather-beaten and woebegone mode, are uniformly excellent, directed by Sen in beautiful unison, their performances different notes in the same melody.
This extraordinarily mundane film – a combination of words I’m fairly certain I’ve never used before – is a tremendous achievement and, in a subtle way, an amazing work of art.
