MIFF Session 16: COMING HOME IN THE DARK

A small family enjoys a picnic in some breathtaking New Zealand scenery until two men stroll up and take over. Then it's a road trip at gun point and things are revealed. This film is spoilable from about the fifteen minute mark so that's as detailed a synopsis as I'll give here. But you will recognise that opening as being a hijack story, albeit on a skirmish scale. What is expected is character development which will inform plot development but neither will need to be particularly deep if the action is there to balance it or some deep revelations. This film doesn't quite do what is expected of it, though, and not necessarily in a good way.

What it does well is build the world it lives in, a constant view of the gigantic freedom outside the windows of a car that has become a prison which closes in claustrophobically as night sets in. Some moments of suspense are also deftly handled and the playing by all the cast doesn't falter for a breath. If you've seen any of Michael Hanneke's or Gaspar Noe's films you will recognise a lot about this one and what this movie also does well is learn rather than lift from them. There are a number of direct references in some scenes (I'll let slip mention of a fire extinguisher for anyone familiar with Irreversible) but they do serve the plot rather than distract from it.

What it does poorly is keep our interest. Partly this is due to a mishandling of the transitional scenes during which the victims must deal with their rage and allow things to develop (in a practical sense: to look for opporunties). The most effective way of doing this is to maintain their fear of the heavy. While Daniel Gillies as Mandrake is a very convincing bad guy whose violence is always just under the surface of his control, the stretches of inaction drain the situation of threat and we all but forget the atrocities that have made us fear him. What is attempted here is that a different kind of threat, that of revelation, should overtake the physical one but it takes far too long to establish and is so water-treading that further acts of violence feel like a relief. When that happens we're really just waiting for the credits in hope that something will come up and wow the b'crikey out of us. Well things do happen but by that stage we're really just recognising them as they pass by.

The point about Hanneke and Noe and all them durn New French Extremity films is that they, each and all, have a point. It is almost never apparent until the end, not in plot twists but in the detail of a gradually forming picture and the journey is typically so gruelling that you never forget nor ever wish to watch them again. If it's the notion of violence begetting violence or the easy acceleration of violence into constant torment this film feels like it expects you to make a lot of assumptions. You do a lot of that in Funny Games or Irreversible but every last one of them is crushed as the purpose is revealed. If I could at least get away with calling this film nihilistic it might make me feel better but then I wouldn't let myself sleep tonight. Then again, for a story that blows its load so early and then spends the rest of the night telling us how it really loves us we should at least get a box of chocolates or something.