Strangerland (2015)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Although the film is a bit slow-moving, it feels as if this adds to the desperation and hopelessness the parents of the missing children are going through. Very good acting from especially Joseph Fiennes and Nicole Kidman.

I liked the movie. It was kind of slow and confusing at times but overall a good movie. I imagine people living in a small isolated town like that one would be a little weird, so isolated. Looked like it was Mars. Nicole Kidman was great I thought the way she portrayed the distraught mom with a past of her own. The ending was disappointing I thought, left you hanging. What happened to Lily? Was she murdered, Did Burtie kill her, was her body out there somewhere, did the unknown driver of the car her brother saw take her to where the concert was going to be held? And if she did go with him why did they leave the boy out there to die? A few questions unanswered in that movie but maybe that's the way the producers wanted it. Now I'm going to wonder forever if Lily died or went to another town. Good movie though.

Set in the Australian outback, Strangerland tells the story of a family that has recently relocated to a small town that is literally in the middle of nowhere. The move seemed like an odd choice, but as you will later find out, it was a necessary one, but needless to say no one is particularly happy about it, especially the families two kids. One day there is a report of a large dust storm headed towards town and the parents go to get their children to safety, only to discover they are nowhere to be found. The local sheriff is called in, but he's not moving fast enough for the father, so he takes things into his own hands, further complicating things. Aside from the unusual setting and circumstances of the disappearance, this film isn't all that original, in fact, except for the ending and the location, it was really very similar to the film, Prisoners. The investigation was fairly interesting, as was the setting, Hugo Weaving was good as the sheriff, but was really the only interesting character with any kind of personality or background of interest. As for the rest of the cast, they're kind of just there, they don't talk much about themselves or their past and the film has an extremely narrow focus. Nicole Kidman just cries a lot and Joseph Fiennes wants to yell at anyone who will listen, which unfortunately is us. The bottom line, Strangerland is an average, forgettable film, it has enough going for it that it will keep your attention and it moves at a decent pace, but the characters are nothing to write home about, the performances are nothing special either, and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand what's going on or what happened in the end.

A dusty and stuffy Australian drama by first-time director Kim Farrant, who echoes the Outback-set aura of some of her country's best films—Picnic at Hanging Rock, Walkabout, and A Cry in the Dark. Nicole Kidman, who's rarely spoken in her native accent on screen a handful of times since her film debut plays in a perfect way the role of Catherine, a mother to two teenagers in an Aussie desert town. Kidman's best performances have often been as grieving moms and on this occasion provides another excellent acting. On a visual scale, Strangerland naturally takes advantage of the landscape's harsh light, and its quality rises with an arrestingly shot sandstorm happening around the movie's halfway mark. Fiennes as well acts (almost) perfectly but what in my opinion matters the most is the suitable location and atmosphere.