Coming Home in the Dark

Aroview: Not for the faint of heart, this Kiwi thriller is confrontingly grim yet takes the psycho-killer genre into thematic territory it rarely bothers to go.

Expanded from an Owen Marshall short story, it excels in all departments (especially the four key performances) and director James Ashcroft (in an impressive debut) knows when to turn the screw and when to restrain. That said, his film puts the viewer in the passenger seat of the worst crime of all and begs for our mercy which, while eventually granted, doesn’t let anyone off the hook.