CUFF 2021 Reviews: Coming Home in the Dark
From the moment I was introduced to it, James Ashcroft’s
Coming Home in the Dark was an enigma. The motivator to watch it had come from CUFF Lead Programmer, Cameron MacGowen, who held the film in high regard and fully expected a big name streaming service to acquire its streaming rights. The teaser and the film descriptions barely gave anything away. All I knew going into it was that Daniel Gillies yes, Elijah from the
Vampire Diaries, Daniel Gillies was to play a psychopathic villain by the name of Mandrake and that the film revolves around a teacher and his family who fall “into a nightmare when they find themselves captured,” by said psychopath. With all the information I was given, I knew to expect a thriller set in New Zealand, featuring an actor I hadn’t thought about since my awkward tween days and that it was all supposed to be incredibly chilling nothing beyond that.
The Calgary Underground Film Festival s 2021 full film lineup
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From left: Daniel Gillies and Matthias Luafutu in Coming Home in the Dark Cancel that wilderness escape.
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A family hiking trip on New Zealand’s remote coastline becomes a nightmare of bloodshed and retribution in debuting director James Ashcroft s white-knuckle psycho thriller.
The enormity of nature hits you like a freight train in the early scenes of James Ashcroft s taut and sinewy first feature,
Coming Home in the Dark. The majestic rural landscape of Greater Wellington, on the southernmost tip of New Zealand s north island, changes in an instant from a place of enveloping tranquility to one of terrifying, helpless isolation as a family s encounter with a pair of murderous drifters uncovers past trauma. What starts out as a nerve-rattling portrait of chance violence becomes a dark meditation on the long-term reverberations of childhood abuse in state institutions.
Coming Home in the Dark Review: A Confident Kiwi Horror Debut Mixes Extremity and Ambiguity Coming Home in the Dark Review: A Confident Kiwi Horror Debut Mixes Extremity and Ambiguity
A daytripping family is put violently through the wringer in James Ashcroft s debut, which initially channels Wolf Creek before revealing something else on its mind.
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Running time: Running time: 93 MIN.
Goldfish Creative
An expensive new car slouches on the side of a deserted country road, unoccupied and unattended, while one passenger door hangs open, creaking disconsolately in the afternoon breeze. It’s the kind of opening image that immediately warns you the film to come is up to nothing good, or at least nothing pleasant: “Coming Home in the Dark” never tells us who was behind the wheel of that abandoned car, though it gives us enough indirect detail to paint a pretty vivid, stomach-turning picture of what went down. At first glance, New
Starring Erik Thompson, Daniel Gillies, Miriama McDowell, Matthias Luafutu
Enjoying its world premiere in the Midnight section at the 2021 virtual edition of the Sundance Film Festival, first-time director James Ashcroft uses his theatre background to tell an intimate, terror driven story that keeps the human drama in focus and firmly in the headlights. It’s a dark, unforgiving film from the word go with a social cause at its heart, but the message never upends the murder in this New Zealand set thriller.
With an undeniable spiritual connection to Ted Kotcheff’s 1971 classic
Wake In Fright, two worlds collide forcing both parties involved to consider who is the culprit and who is the victim.
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