You’ll Never Find Me – REVIEW
You’ll Never Find Me is one of the finest Australian horror thrillers ever produced. Filmmakers Josiah Allen and Indianna Bell have excelled in their feature directorial debut, the only Australian feature selected to screen at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival.
Set on a miserable rainy night a young woman knocks on the door of a mobile home in the secluded section of a caravan park, asking for a ride to town. Patrick, a lonely unemployed middle-aged man opens the door.
What follows is a dark, spinechilling, and unsettling story concerning paranoia that should engage audiences throughout.
“You’ve knocked on the wrong door, my car’s been playing up,” he tells her. Who’s the villain in what can also be classed as a psychological thriller? Patrick is quietly spoken, but with a sinister expression on his face. The unnamed young woman is a self-confessed ‘wild spirit’. What is her reason for being out late in such stormy weather?
As the movie progresses the awkwardness between these two characters intensifies, prompting audiences to go backwards and forwards in their thoughts, as they attempt to solve the puzzle as to who the crazed antagonist is.
With the exception of a couple of brief sequences filmed outdoors, the film is predominantly set inside the mobile home evoking an atmospheric, claustrophobic feel. This compounds the unsettling knowledge that there’s nowhere for these characters to run and hide in the event of any evil doings.
Is it nice to spend time with a stranger? More importantly can a stranger be trusted? This is a cleverly written and executed horror flick in which suspense is maintained throughout. As the thunder and lightning increases so does the drama. Audiences will be at the edge of their seats – there’s another loud knock on the door and suddenly the power to the entire caravan park goes off!
Brendan Rock and Elena Carapetis deliver effective performances in what may be the sleeper hit in cinemas this year. Horror buffs should enjoy the drama that leads to a shocking and unhappy finale and ponder whether they too may have done things in their past that they should be paranoid about…
★★★★
In select cinemas March 14
