The enormity of nature hits you like a freight train in the early scenes of James Ashcroft's taut and sinewy first feature, Coming Home in the Dark.
The majestic rural landscape of Greater Wellington, on the southernmost tip of New Zealand's north island, changes in an instant from a place of enveloping tranquility to one of terrifying, helpless isolation as a family's encounter with a pair of murderous drifters uncovers past trauma.
What starts out as a nerve-rattling portrait of chance violence becomes a dark meditation on the long-term reverberations of childhood abuse in state institutions.
Adapted by actor-turned-director Ashcroft and Eli Kent from the short story by leading New Zealand fiction writer Owen Marshall, the thriller teases.
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