I am receiving constant reminders of how the Covid knockdown and working from home has knocked me for six. Today it was the effort it took to get me off my arse and out the front door for a day out on my own, and to make the decision all by myself as an adult to see a film while I was out and about. I love(d) the cinema, going to see and try different things, but in recent years I’ve largely only managed to get out for mainstream hits after long planning. I love Alasdair Gray to bits so of course I was going to see Poor Things as soon as I could (and did). However, I only saw Dune because it was re-released when Dune 2 was released (I bought a book in 1980 of interviews of famous science fiction writers by Charles Platt which I have read over and over since then, especially because he interviewed Philip K Dick, which then led to me being a smart arse and referring to the ideos cosmos and koinos cosmos in high school essays on John Donne’s poetry. In the introduction to his interview with Frank Herbert, he confesses to never having read Dune, for reasons, even though when he tought SF the “kids” always wanted it on the reading list. While I would read fat Russian novels, I would never read fat popular SF when I was younger. I then realised what a twit I was and read all the fat things like Dune, Stranger in a Strange Land, and in fantasy, Lord of the Rings. I also read Dune Messiah, and that is as far as I will go, because those books have serious limitations, I’m not so much into determinism, life is short, and I’m not an American in the 1960s who has hardly heard of Islam. This is notwithstanding Brian Aldiss’s influence on my reading with Billion / Trillion Year Spree. Anyways.)

So I was out in Newtown today and checked out the Dendy as I walked past and decided to see a new Australian horror film, “You’ll Never Find Me,” which I saw had good reviews (which means that I don’t have to write one).

I’m not averse to a beat in a song, but as someone told me, the beat may come from the bass and not the drum. I like to be carried along, and generally I am not going to be carried along by cinematic highlights that have no connection. This is a way of saying that I like plot, or perhaps put better, I like the revelation of story. When I talk to friends about cinema, I am always on about the importance of writing, and how so many Australian films seem to be missing one or two further redrafts. When John Safran commented on the Spierig Brothers’ vampire film, Daybreakers, he said that he felt he had been tricked into watching an Australian film, and I think that I knew what he meant. There is often something missing.

“You’ll Never Find Me” was not plotless, but there would have been little trouble in reducing it to an elevator pitch. When the final revelation comes, it is not a great surprise, it was among the 4-6 possible resolutions many of the audience would have had in their mind. But this is not a criticism, it was very good horror.

The film is largely a two-hander filmed on one set, and there is a suspicion that such films are that way because of budgetary considerations. Russell T Davies says without Disney financing, Doctor Who would become claustrophobic ghost stories. This may be the case for “You’ll Never Find Me”, but I was immediately struck by the production values, the composition of the scenes, and the use of light and sound. I love good horror, and what I look for is often atmosphere and feeling which requires great confidence in film makers. This was a very confident production – it had to be to create a greate sense of terror and unease in a haunted house which was just an extended cabin in a caravan part, to prove that hell can exist in a very small space indeed.

Not only a compressed space, but a short time. It runs for 96 minutes, which is good. My firm belief is (notwithstanding my love of ‘Salem’s Lot and Straub’s Ghost Story), that horror is best in shorter form. This is because, to me, horror requires maintenance of particular moods, and it is difficult for that to be done over too long a period. “You’ll Never Find Me” got the timing right, hitting the right length for a story that is often carried along by the creaks in the ceiling and the peals of thunder as any development in the story.

No doubt I have seen the leads before, but I could not remember them from anything else. Jordan Cowan as the mystery visitor, and Brendan Rock as the caravan park denizen, were both great. So much depended upon nuance in their performances and their choices with the way they delivered their dialogue.

I did not find the ending the best, but I cannot suggest what would have been better. I see reviewers disagree with me on that. It didn’t really matter to me though, because this one was very much about the ride and the atmosphere along the way, and the end certainly was not inconsistent with that.

Highly recommended. I very much look forward to more work – hopefully including more horror – from Indianna Bell and Josiah Allen, their direction (and production) was top notch. I suspect that bigger budgets will come their way after this, I hope that this does not take away from their discipline and effectiveness in their story telling, because they really did a lot with what they had here.