Misery lurks in the Australian outback. From Walkabout through Priscilla, Queen of the Desert to Wolf Creek, it is well documented that those who stray into the red centre are forced to confront the dark side of humanity. So it is in Andrew Upton’s tense psychological thriller, Gone. Mr Cate Blanchett revisits the familiar scenario of tourists-in-trouble when a British backpacker meets a too-friendly American. Taylor offers the recent arrival a lift to Byron Bay where Alex is meeting his girlfriend. Despite some vague ill-feeling, he accepts but before you can say ‘look out behind you’, three has definitely become a crowd.

Criticism that this is but a dusty retread of Dead Calm misses a critical point. Unlike Gone’s stable-mates, tension wells organically from deep within the story. First time director Ledwidge shoots straight, taking his cue from Upton’s concise and elegant script. He plays on the concerns ‘paranoid’ Alex has about the charming American but as keeper of a secret, he can’t disclose them. By the time Taylor reveals his hand, it’s too late and the gore that follows is all the more frightening for its credibility.

Gone is not a slasher film and doesn’t invoke the genre’s ‘gotcha’ staples. It’s a sharp, nasty lesson in trust. While that will disappoint many expecting rivers of blood, it should impress many more. An attractive cast serves the film well, as does an art department that manages to make spunky Taylor grow spunkier in counterpoint to his increasingly ugly behaviour.

The result is a hard, mean thriller that the Australian Tourist Board must hope dies a box-office death. Moral of the story? Stay clear of Americans in the desert. It only leads to trouble.

// COLIN FRASER