Welllington community-based production company Torchlight Films impressed with their first two very modest outings: Taking the Waewae Express in 2009, was about the aftermath of a car accident, and Hook, Line and Sinker two years later, which explored the impact on a family when the truckie breadwinner failed an eye test.
Both told small stories tightly, avoiding cheap tricks and creating real, believable characters on a budget barely bigger than zero.
The new one is technically more ambitious (and more polished: Alun Bollinger and Waka Attewell shot it, Annie Collins' editing is a dream and the score is full of rich pleasures) but something has been lost in the attempt to up the production ante.
The fragmented, elliptical narrative approach requires something dramatically big to be at stake if it is really going to work: the viewer needs to pick up clues that allow realisation to dawn before the big reveal.
