YOU'LL NEVER FIND ME - Mark Reviews Movies

You'll Never Find Me, Shudder

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 21, 2024

It may be easy to mock, but maybe there's something to a story—at least a certain kind of story—beginning with a dark and stormy night. That's how You'll Never Find Me begins, as an isolated man in a trailer park somewhere in Australia sits at his kitchen table, lost in thought. Then, the rain starts coming down hard, and as clichéd as the introduction might be, co-director/screenwriter Indianna Bell immediately establishes the mood of this subdued and eerie thriller.

The man's name, as we'll learn later, is Patrick, and he's played by Brendan Rock, who has the kind of melancholy, lonely expression that elicits instant sympathy and some darker tinge behind his eyes that makes us reconsider why we might feel that way about this character. Back in the day, people would comment that a man such as him has, not a face, but a mug. In case it isn't clear, that's meant as a compliment, and Bell and her co-director Josiah Allen are smart enough to put that mug to good use.

From a filmmaking perspective, they're wise to revolve most of the action around close-ups, too. Every look here tells some kind of story about this man, the visitor who unexpectedly turns up at his cramped pre-fab home on this dark and stormy night, and how both of these characters are hiding something or a lot of things from each other. The screenplay is pretty much a game of hidden details, statements that could be lies or the truth, and revelations very gradually coming to light, but the playing of it is entirely on the landscape of the faces of Rock and his co-star Jordan Cowan.

Cowan has quite the face, too, capable of evoking trepidation and maybe the spark of something sinister at the same time. Watching the film, we start to understand the dynamic between these characters, not by what they say or how they say it, but in some little tic or the absence of it when something arises in the conversation. It seems rare these days for a thriller to focus exclusively on how people interact with each other, which makes Allen and Bell's film feel refreshing, and it's rarer still for even that kind of thriller to recognize the intrinsic strength of what two well-cast and skilled actors can bring to close-ups.

The setup has Cowan's visitor, only known and credited as "the Visitor," knocking on Patrick's door this night. He doesn't want to open it at first, because it's very late and, according to him later, some local kids have been pranking him by knocking at all hours of the night and running away before he can answer the door. There's no reason not to believe him about this, except that his reaction to the knocking isn't just anger and frustration. His staring and yelling at the door have a hint of fear to them, and why would a man like this be scared of some obnoxious kids?

Eventually, he does open the door for the Visitor, who says she passed out on the beach, started walking home, and ended up in this area when the storm started. She just needs a place to stay out of the rain, dry off a bit, and call someone for a ride. Once he realizes his error in judgment, Patrick is eager to help this young woman, and for obvious reasons, the Visitor can't help but be suspicious of that eagerness.

The plot, such as it is, amounts to a series of back-and-forths in both dialogue and action between the two characters, trapped in this little house by circumstances—the rain, the fact that Patrick doesn't own a cellphone, the nearest payphone being just outside the locked gate of the park—and not sure what each one wants from the other. The suspicion around Patrick is apparent, and the filmmakers play a bit with perspective in almost subconscious ways, such as how every one of Patrick's footsteps lands with a thunderous thud whenever the Visitor is on screen. He's a big guy, but he's not so big that his footfalls should sound as if he's wearing concrete blocks on his feet.

If the game is primarily about what we need to know about these characters and what their intentions are in this situation, it's also, then, about with whom we're supposed to sympathize and why. The Visitor seems like the more apparent candidate upfront, since she finds herself alone with a complete stranger and vulnerable if there is something to that looks beneath his sad face.

Patrick, though, seems like a stand-up man, offering her clean clothes, a shower, food, and, in some moments of unhindered openness, a rather intimate understanding of just how lonely he is. There's also the fact that, after all, this woman is a complete stranger to him. Of all the places for her to look for shelter in a storm, is it just pure coincidence that the Visitor found herself at his door? Beyond that, why is there an occasional hole in her story?

The film finds its tension in simply presenting these characters as people who might be as innocent as they seem or as the potential threat they sometimes appear. You'll Never Find Me balances that dichotomy well, thanks to these performances and those subtle touches of shifting perspective, and by the time the climax arrives, the film has earned its escalation to a veritable nightmare that digs just a bit deeper than simply revealing what's really going on here.

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