Gone review

Put another corpse on the barbie: this British-made, Oz-shot horror flick follows in the bloodprints of last year’s outback-packing butcher shop Wolf Creek. Brit twentysomethings Alex (Shaun Evans) and Sophie (Amelia Warner) are unlucky travellers who hook up with Yank drifter Taylor (Scott Mechlowicz). The signs are ominous – grey skies, kangaroo roadkill and outback emptiness. You know what’s coming, but former ad director Ringan Ledwidge refuses to cut to the chase or the O-negative. Instead we get a looooong build-up (establishing character, allegedly) as Mechlowicz’s bargain-basement psycho plays mind games with his new buddies. It’s efficiently tense, but with a slowburn fuse like that you want there to be a big bang at the end of it. And guess what? There’s not. A final reel of arterial spray splatter empties itself in record time and when Gone finally gets going, it’s gone too soon.