Horror-comedy: Tom Sainsbury just wants to get away from it all. Photo / Supplied
Horror-comedy: Tom Sainsbury just wants to get away from it all. Photo / Supplied
Tom Sainsbury might best be known for his breakthrough short face-swap Snapchat impersonations and parodies of middle-class angst as he is for his television roles. But when it comes to long-form productions of his own, the prolific playwright, actor, comedian and panel show participant leans towards horror.
His feature directorialdebut LoopTrack follows 2020′s Dead. In the earlier film, he played a guy with a drug-induced sixth sense, communicating with the dearly departed.
In Loop Track, he’s back in the land of the living with a very Kiwi black horror-comedy that subverts expectations and uses thriller tropes brilliantly.
Sainsbury plays timid, tired Ian, a man simply wanting to get away from it all. He decides a multi-day bush trek is just what his soul needs. Imagine the introvert’s distress when he encounters cheerful, chatty Nicky, played by a hilarious Hayden J Weal, Sainsbury’s co-writer on Dead, which Weal directed.
Nicky insists on accompanying the taciturn Ian on his inaugural tramp. What unfolds is a mysterious tale of either mental unwellness or existential crisis – or possibly, as Ian begins to suspect, something even worse.
Sainsbury is superb, all the more impressive that someone best known for his comedy turns can portray Ian in such an authentically unfunny way, leaving the comic timing to Weal’s delightfully recognisable stranger who’s a well-meaning pain in the arse.
Kate Simmonds and Tawanda Manyimo complete the cast as two Aussie trampers from whom Ian just wants to escape. The top-notch performances of the four, as well as terrific photography and a fantastically atmospheric Soundtrack by Mike Newport, all help in a production that defies its shoestring budget.
There is a slight lapse in pace in the third act, but the tension remains high right up to its amazing, out-of-the-blue denouement. As for the lush bush location, Loop Track might end up doing for tramping what Jaws did for swimming at the beach.
