On a dark, stormy night, loner Patrick sits at the table in his trailer, contemplating the end. The rain is beating on his trailer’s rickety roof and windows when there is an insistent banging at his door. Against his better judgement, he lets the visitor in and deeply uncomfortable viewing ensues. The visitor finds it increasingly difficult to leave and for his part, Patrick finds it increasingly difficult to tell fiction from reality.
He is not the only one
In their feature-length directorial debut, Australian filmmakers Josiah Allen and Indianna Bell deliver a tense, claustrophobic horror that will keep the audience guessing to the very end. You'll Never Find Me dives deep into gender dynamics and the quagmire of unchartered territory between the generations. Is Patrick as lonely, paranoid and cynical as he seems, or is the visitor the strange one?
Personally, it left me feeling a bit dull as I battled to work out who exactly the antagonist was in that trailer on that very strange, stormy night. Lost for words as the credits rolled, I’d very helpfully scribbled down, ‘I’m left with the distinct impression that I no longer have a grasp of what is real and what is not’. It was only in the quiet hours that followed that I was able to unpick and piece back together the clues and circular timeline, to arrive at some level of enlightenment.
You'll Never Find Me is a very clever film
Brendan Rock (Carnifex) is excellent as the deeply troubled Patrick. The victim of self-imposed exile in a trailer park in a very remote location, Patrick is paying the price for the mistake that lost him his job. The only problem is that he quite liked making that mistake.
Jordan Cowan (Krystal Klairvoyant) shines as the young visitor. Perfectly embodying the deep distrust anyone under 25 has for those born in the last century, she sails her way through the night with the carefully curated blank facial expressions that are the hallmark of her generation. She is giving away nothing, least of all clues as to what she might be up to.
The rain itself is a character in You'll Never Find Me. Brief flashbacks of a girl knocking on a car window provide a welcome chance for the viewer to catch their breath before being plunged back into the stagnant air of the trailer once again. It is a different thing altogether inside that trailer, where the rain becomes primary prisoner and tormentor, sentencing Patrick and the visitor to a very awkward and confusing situation.
For so much of You'll Never Find Me, I thought this was going to be a film of more suffocation and discomfort than scares but wait, the horror does come. In those final moments where the plot unpacks itself, you realise that the worst nightmare imaginable is playing out, one that repeatedly wakes me up at night. This film is not going to help that. At all.
I give You'll Never Find Me an excellent four out of five stars. Recommended for fans of claustrophobic horror and Australian frankness. I'll be interested to see what Josiah Allen and Indianna Bell deliver next because this did not feel like a debut feature.
★★★★☆
A Shudder Original, You'll Never Find Me premieres on Friday 22 March 2024.
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