Coffin Rock

THRILLER; 1hr 32min

STARRING: Robert Taylor, Lisa Chappell, Sam Parsonson


Don’t look back: Chappell

Frustrated in her desire to have a baby with her fisherman husband, Rob (Taylor), Jess (Chappell) is growing desperate and the two of them are starting to fight. Rob and Jess live in a seaside community where there is not much for her to do but obsess — and on one reckless night, have plastered sex with a blow-in weirdo (incongruously baby-faced Parsonson as Evan). Not only is Jess unaware that Evan is avoid-at-all-costs unhinged, but as the former receptionist at the IVF clinic that she and Rob have visited, he knows far too much. This is not someone with whom you want to conceive a child, especially when your husband’s fertility is in question.

 

Film-maker Rupert Glasson’s debut feature is creepily plausible as Jess’s circumstances nosedive into private chaos paralleled by an almighty emerging mess. The emotions run high and fiery and the incremental violence is an ugly spill of shocks — par for the course from the producers of Wolf Creek and Rogue. But the real horror implicit here is the inexorable pull of action and reaction when good people’s lives go unfathomably bad.