Coffin Rock

Hotly billed as being ‘From the Producer of Wolf Creek’, Coffin Rock is a rather more subdued affair than 2005’s outback slasher movie. However, although hardcore horror fans may find it lacking, the initial attention to the drama and lives of the eponymous fishing town of Coffin Rock only adds to the building tension and the empathy we gain for its main characters.

Rob and Jess are a couple in their late thirties desperately trying to conceive a baby in a town where everyone knows each others’ embarrassing personal troubles. After an argument with Rob, Jess drunkenly ends up sleeping with a young newcomer to the town, Evan, who has, unbeknownst to her, deliberately followed Jess to the small town after seeing her at the IFV clinic where he worked.

What at first seems to be a sweet crush, soon turns into a rather unhinged obsession, and when Jess becomes pregnant, her cover up of the one night stand starts to disintegrate along with the sanity of the now obviously psychotic Evan.

The breathing space left for drama and characterisation towards the start of the film allows all these characters to seem much more real. The fact that Jess is pushy and overbearing and Rob is annoyingly prideful of his manhood makes them all the more realistic when their world starts being pulled apart by Evan.

And this is really Evan’s film. The powerhouse performance by relative newcomer Sam Parsonson evokes the feel of Billy Zane in Dead Calm, or Michael Keaton in Pacific Heights. Indeed these are much better reference points than Wolf Creek, and although some scenes seem rather overlong at times and the usual clichés of reaction times of the terrorised characters will typically annoy, the final pay offs and the climax of the film will no doubt impress fans of directors such as DePalma or great thrillers like Cape Fear and Fatal Attraction. In fact, a scene with a baby Kangaroo is very close to the bunny in the boiling pot.

Ben Parker

Anticipation:

Wolf Creek was pretty great. But this is from 'the producer'? Oh.

Enjoyment:

An intelligent and effective horror-slash-thriller.

In Retrospect:

Can't live with the best of the genre, but worth a punt this Halloween.