Streaming channel Shudder picked up You’ll Never Find Me at the Tribeca Festival, proving yet again that whoever does the buying over there has an eye for a good horror movie.
It’s an “it was a dark and stormy night” affair. A man sitting alone in his grungey trailer in the back of the Australian beyond is assaulted by a heavy pounding on the door. Reluctant to open up, he eventually yields, to reveal a young woman outside in bare feet, soaked to the skin and wide-eyed with fear.
She’s been running, she says, from the beach through the storm. Warily he lets her in. And just as warily she enters. After all, she doesn’t know this man, an obvious loner.
Take off your wet things, he says, and I’ll put them on the heater to dry. She’s not so sure of that. He offers her a hot shower to help her warm up. She’s not sure about that either. A whisky? Cup of tea then? Eventually she settles for a quick shower (bikini top stays on) and accepts a bowl of hot soup, while Patrick, a bluff and paranoid man, attempts to allay the fears of the mysterious visitor with vague attempts at humour. He’ll accompany her to the only phone around this area once the storm has abated a bit, he says. She’d like to go now but doesn’t know where the phone is located. In any case the door might be locked now, she suspects, though tries to play it cool. There is paranoia on either side, and it’s blowing a gale out there.
Cat-and-mouse gameplay takes over, between Patrick (Brendan Rock) and the woman billed only as the Visitor (Jordan Cowan), but also between film-makers Josiah Allen and Indianna Bell and their audience. Her story doesn’t quite stack up; he doesn’t seem entirely benign. Who’s the wrong’un here?
From the very first shot this is a brilliantly choreographed film in terms of delineation of space, dramatic framing and camera moves, angles and lighting. Set almost entirely in this tightly confined space, as a challenge these low-budget film-makers have set themselves, and which they rise to, You’ll Never Find Me constantly changes up the ambience, the pace and look of the film, as Patrick and the Visitor dance around each other warily and the sense of threat ebbs and flows tidally.
Foreshadowing and flashback is done in salty stabs, but eventually it’s the arm’s length caginess in the here that has to resolve to somewhere, and it does, explosively and bloodily. Interestingly, Indianna Bell’s screenplay doesn’t go entirely for the big screamy finish here. It injects yet more psychological horror at precisely the moment when the gorehounds are licking their lips in anticipation. For the avoidance of doubt, you get that too.
Slow burn followed by quick release. This movie is surely already being used in film schools as an example of how to mount an effective horror movie with two characters on one set.
All hail the tightly storyboarded direction by Allen and the smart script by Bell. He does the visuals, she does the writing, but there’s more crossover going on than that, they say, hence the joint director credit (Powell and Pressburger did the same, so good company).
All hail also the excellent technicals by DP Maxx Corkindale, who keeps it fresh and vivid, sound designer Duncan Campbell (so much howling outside against an almost womblike intimacy inside) and composer Duncan Lim, gurgles and shrieking strings a speciality.
The big, looming close-ups of both Rock and Cowan would make it particularly effective on the big screen but it’ll also work perfectly well at Shudder size on whatever screen you’re watching it on.
The platform is on a roll, whether it’s financing movies or snapping them up once made. File this alongside other recent crackers bearing the Shudder imprint, such as Huesera: The Bone Woman, An Unquiet Grave, Watcher and Birth/Rebirth. You’ll Never Find Me is well worth finding.
You’ll Never Find Me – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
