“COMING HOME IN THE DARK”: Good vs. Evil on a Joyless Ride

COMING HOME IN THE DARK Review

Synopsis

A teacher is forced to confront a secret from his past when a pair of ruthless drifters take his family on a nightmare road-trip.

John Smistad’s Review

Good vs. Evil. Okay, not so good. But evil as all hell.

A school teacher and his family are on holiday at a remote New Zealand campground. A couple of super sketchy guys stroll up and help themselves to their food. Then they whip out a rifle and rob them. But before they make a clean get-away teach’s nickname slips out. His identity is revealed. And the sins of the past are revisited upon him.

And so begins “Coming Home in the Dark”, a savage stroll (make that all-night nightmare road trip) down a memory lane of misery, mercilessly paved with unspeakable pain and regret.

Fine performances all around

Daniel Gillies chills your spine frozen as the menacing maniac Mandrake. Erik Thomson is also absorbing, and sympathetic (emphasis on pathetic) as Hoagie, the coulda/shoulda been hero now fated to face a future of unbearable and unrelenting grief.

If he chooses to carry on at all.

And, last but sure as shit not least, Miriama McDowell is the powerful-plus and tough as raw wolf meat Jill, shaken to her core in shock and still fighting and clawing with the vicious primal strength only a vengeful mother can summon.

And damn fine call on the music here, Jim!

As the proud son of a Norway native (Happy Father’s Day, Dad!), I would be remiss in not recognizing and amply appreciating filmmaker James Ashcroft’s selection of the great Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg‘s Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46: II as the soundtrack punctuating these brutally bloodcurdling final scenes we see in “Coming Home in the Dark”.

Nice touch, sir. But those visuals.

Uff da!

“Coming Home in the Dark” streams on both amazon Prime Video and Netflix.

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THE QUICK FLICK CRITIC (ruderangers.com)