Australian filmmakers know isolation horror like no other, and YOU’LL NEVER FIND ME is a simple, audacious nonpareil of the genre.
Patrick (Brendan Rock) sits alone in his trailer, drinking, listening to its creaks and groans in shrieking of the storm outside. He stares into the abyss of his bedroom hallway, and already we know there is something lurking there, just out of sight. There’s a banging on the front door and in walks the Visitor (Jordan Cowan), a trembling young woman drenched from the rain and seeking shelter. Patrick invites her to wait out the storm and the two begin their hypnotic dance, at points both terrified and terrifying, as the night drags on.
YOU’LL NEVER FIND ME is almost entirely shot in a single location with two actors and little-to-no SFX, with 80 minutes of its 90 minute runtime being a terse dialogue between strangers. In the hands of lesser directors, the film could have easily become a sluggish work of low-budget wannabe horror. Instead, directors Indianna Bell and Josiah Allen crafted a film so viscerally discomforting from the first minute to the very last that you (like me) might find yourself in the foetal position, cringing away from the screen.
Much of the allure of the film lies in its unpredictability, so I won’t give too much away. There are inconsistencies and red herrings galore, insinuations and blatant deceit, tiny unerring details that slowly build the tension until even the characters can’t take it anymore and everything implodes. The filmmakers do well to toy with our assumptions about the characters, luring us along well-trodden stereotypical paths before diverging and unsettling us; repeating over and over until we’re left isolated and paranoid. The film thrives in its quietest moments: in a claustrophobic atmosphere created by dim artificial lighting, distant rain battering a tin roof, and the over-amplification of every single diegetic sound, an extended shot of the back of Patrick’s head is one of the most unnerving scenes I’ve ever watched.
The film does drag a little during the second act as the characters enact a slightly repetitive cat and mouse game, and perhaps it could have benefited from a more judicious touch throughout the editing process, but that is my only critique. Allen and Bell are not wasteful directors: the torchlight falling on a lonely hammer; a close-up on an empty packet of chips; a glimpse of red cloth —there is not a shot or prop that doesn’t serve a purpose, nor a throwaway line.
Rock’s stellar performance brings a distinct Australian masculinity to Patrick that imbues each scene with a disturbing familiarity; in one scene appearing like every dirty, chauvinistic old man with gluttonous hands, and the next evoking pity at his paranoia and pathetic attempts at connection. Matching his talent for transformation, co-star Cowan flits between the weary, fearful traveller and someone more sinister, a Visitor who seems to know Patrick more intimately than she is letting on.
YOU’LL NEVER FIND ME is an engrossing, nauseatingly intentional masterpiece of Australian horror that eschews the paranormal in favour of earthly terrors; a film so efficient in its purpose that I would gladly never watch it again.
