Coming Home In The Dark: A Pitch-Black Thriller With A Strong Grip
Actor James Ashcroft makes his directorial debut with the solidly gripping, pitch-black thriller Coming Home In The Dark. Boiling with tension and bolstered by a chilling performance from Daniel Gillies, the film takes viewers for a bleak and brutal ride sure to shred a nerve or two.
A family's outing at an isolated coastline descends into terror when high school teacher Alan 'Hoaggie' Hoaganraad, his wife Jill, and stepsons Maika and Jordon unexpectedly come across a pair of murderous drifters — the enigmatic psychopath Mandrake and his hulking man-child accomplice Tubs — who thrust them into a nightmare road trip.
The idyllic countryside is turned into a menacing fright in James Ashcroft’s sturdy debut, Coming Home In The Dark. The film whisks us away to the striking wide open spaces of New Zealand’s Greater Wellington coast. As we bask in the natural beauty of the landscape’s hilly vastness, there’s a looming sense of foreboding that sends ripples through our tranquility. A slow, controlled zoom reveals a deserted Mercedes strewn across the shoulder of the road, its door flung open and ominously blowing in the breeze. A car passes by, and makes no attempt to stop to offer any aide. We enter the vehicle and meet the family we’ll be following; there’s schoolteacher Hoaggie (Erik Thomson), his wife Jill (Miriama McDowell) and her teenage sons Maika and Jordan (Billy and Frankie Paratene).
We’re presented with a few moments of dry humor, which help to bond us to the family, but the tension and dread remain palpable and ever present. As Maika and Jordan bicker in the backseat in true brotherly fashion, we see their car move through the enormity of the landscape like a lone ant on a sidewalk. Another creeping zoom draws us in closer. It’s as if they’re being swallowed up by the solitude — or being watched. The family’s isolation becomes an inescapable concern when they encounter two up-to-no-good drifters, Tubs (Matthias Luafutu) and Mandrake (Daniel Gillies), who upend their charming day trip and send them hurtling into turmoil.
At first blush, this appears to be a random stroke of fate, a family caught up in the grinding gears of chance, in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, as we learn about Hoaggie’s past, we begin to see an emerging connection, tracking all the way back to an assistantship at a boys’ school, that binds him to our murderous drifters. Things begin to the shape of a bleak and sadistic revenge film about the long-term rippling effects of child abuse in all its many forms (physical, sexual, emotional), but there’s another layer added to the mix. We discover that Hoaggie didn’t personally do anything malevolent to the boys in the school, but he did witness a lot of atrocities of which he did nothing. Does this make him just as guilty as those who committed the acts directly? If Hoaggie didn’t harm Tubs or Mandrake directly, is their violent brutality warranted? The film wants us to ask these questions and more.
It starts incredibly strong, but as its plot slowly unravels, it begins to lose some of its momentum. There’s some shocking gut punches and pulse-pounding moments of suspense, but the story and the filmmaking become more loose and flimsy as it pushes toward a close. Ashcroft’s controlled zooms and less-is-more restraint (a la Michael Haneke’s Funny Games) give way to ineffectual handheld coverage that detracts from the visceral chill and unease that the eerily steady compositions inflict. The performances are solid, but Daniel Gillies is the clear standout. He delivers a career-defining performance here and is utterly terrifying. There’s a sadistic menace that lurks behind his polite facade and ice-cold calm that cuts straight to the bone.
Overall, Coming Home In The Dark takes you for a relentlessly harrowing ride that’s not for the faint of heart. You’ll find notes of The Hitcher, Killing Ground, Wolf Creek, and Funny Games, with style, cinematography, and direction reminiscent of Michael Haneke, David Fincher, and early Spielberg (particularly Duel and Sugarland Express in the way it uses sunlight). It strives to deliver more than hollow genre thrills and has something to say about people treating others as objects, how hurt people hurt people. As much as we enjoyed it, we felt like it got a bit less interesting as it progressed, instead of building toward something more immense for its climax. Its ending didn’t fully satisfy, but Ashcroft and company definitely cooked up one hell of a thriller that plays its genre beats close to its chest.
Recommendation: If dark thrillers frothing with tension and brutality are your bag, definitely give Coming Home In The Dark a watch! The film hits select theaters and VOD on October 1st.
Rating: 3.5 enigmatic psychopaths outta 5.
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