With an exceptional opening dripping with suspense and tension, Coming Home In The Dark grabs you by the neck and forces you to pay attention from the moment it begins rolling. The gripping tale continues to unfold with equal parts stress and dread as the connections of these characters is revealed, but unfortunately it cannot sustain the heft of its introduction for the entire runtime. The plot begins to meander and repetitious escapes are thwarted, only to culminate in a somewhat stale, formulaic finale. Still, a chilling ride that'll surely satiate anyone after a more suspenseful horror/thriller over the usual bumps in the night.
What a ride. Coming Home in the Dark is a gripping survival horror from New Zealand that forces to confront uncomfortable truths. A school teacher taking a holiday with his family. Soon their holiday is disrupted by two random men who might know his troubled past. This film is bleak, mesmerising, dreadful, and sure to keep you on the edge of your seat. It's like watching home invasion films except it's a road trip. Packed with so much tension and very good at sustaining it, it makes you feel unsafe the entire runtime. It features outstanding performance from Miriama McDowell and Daniel Gillies. The way this film avoids any kind of cliche twist makes it even more realistic. Visually speaking, it's stunning. It really nails on the oppressive atmosphere and makes effective use of the gorgeous scenery. The opening scene is shockingly brutal and immediately grabbed my attention. After that, it starts to drag a little and the ending leaves this unsatisfactory feeling but for the most part it's an engaging journey from start to finish.
It's a really unsettling and unexpected plot. Daniel, Erik and Mirlama are great actor.
I wasn’t too sure about the coincidental nature of the opening but otherwise, this was a tense, shocking thriller.
Like accidently dropping your phone down a well, this is depressing yet frustrating and reaches some depths.
This strong feature directorial debut by Kiwi James Ashcroft takes a turn for the worse when it becomes obvious the strangers who accost the family picnicking in the middle of New Zealand nowhere are not there by accident. Or are they?
Coming Home in the Dark is torture porn reminiscent of Eden Lake and the Hitcher, though suffers from some ambiguity in the story and some WTFery in the action.
Still, the movie moves along at a good place and the actors (especially Daniel Gillies as Mandrake) deliver, so the film ends with a cop out but ends up as a recommend.
That sounded like a 13B Rotary engine
An well executed but finally unoriginal roadtrip of clichés. Everything you expect to happen will.
Plenty of potential, but terrible execution. This is not thrilling in any way other than the beginning.
There were far too many opportunities for the captives to get away and almost an hour of the runtime is then driving while insinuating something bad happened in the past.
Other than some good brutality and a good premise, I was bored for most of it.
Definitely not for everyone. While I love a good horror movie, I have to admit that I'm getting a bit jaded on the "man's inhumanity to man" genre (i.e. the entire Saw franchise, Hostel and a slew of others). While this was far from being as gruesome as the above-mentioned franchises, it's just the basic cruelty of man that I've grown really tired of. We all do stupid things, we all "allow" ourselves to be put in stupid situations that we can look back 30 years later and say, "I wish I'd done things differently..." and we all have regrets and (in many cases) we all have an albatross around our neck that we have to live with. That doesn't merit having a sociopath hunt you down and turn your entire existence into a nightmare…and that's all this was. While the story itself was quite good, it seemed to get bogged down and wasn't sure how to wrap things up. Some would be uncomfortable with the conclusion but I thought it was very fitting…especially for how dark this movie was. While it's certainly not in my favorite line of movies, I'll stop short of saying "Don't watch it." Depending on your personal tastes, you might enjoy it as a screenplay. I didn't.
Shout by hannahBlockedParent2021-12-01T16:02:07Z
the intensity and brutality of the first act of the film makes the rest of it drag on, but it's still a very good movie. definitely worth watching. daniel gillies and miriama mcdonald were amazing in particular as other comments have said.