Before she can do so, a new wheelchair-bound resident Bernadette Gibson moves in with her son Robert Ratti in tow, and their arrival is a precursor to the delirious madness yet to unfold. When one of the residents turns up dead in his bathtub, it unlocks something within Linda in the form of repressed childhood memories and the overwhelming sensation that something is wrong at Montclare. Yet, there is so little evidence to back up any such sinister claims of a murderer in the halls and overwhelming evidence to contradict it. Despite the unglamourous locations of scrubby Australian countryside, a shabby diner and the austere retirement home, the direction and camera work ensures that every shot counts. Drawing inspiration from a number of big-name Hollywood features of the time, most notable The Shining and The Changeling right down to the red ball , Next of Kin is very much a slow-burn, perhaps too much.
The ability to draw in the viewer without relying on action set pieces and pyrotechnics seems to be a particular skill of film makers hailing from this continent. With a graceful skip, she manages to dodge even the very definition of ambiguity! With all this confidence behind the camera, it's also a joy to watch the acting performances, as there isn't a wrong note among them. Linda picks up a nearby rifle and fatally shoots him in the head. Following the death of her mother, a young woman inherits a retirement home elegantly named Montclare. Recently, however, this long-time famine has yielded to an overflowing feast with the release of two incredible Blu-ray releases from Umbrella Entertainment and Severin Films. We empathise with Linda, and a certain excitable part of us wants to believe what she believes so fiercely.
The story goes like this: Linda Jacki Kerin — The River Kings returns to Monteclare Retirement Home upon the death of her mother, who has left the entire property to Linda. The interview - taken from the sessions filmed for the brilliant Ozsploitation documentary Not Quite Hollywood - is lengthy and informative enough to make up for it though make sure you watch it to find out the truth about the spectacular final scene. One of the elderly inmates dies unexpectedly quite early on in the film, and this scene and it's aftermath are filmed for maximum creepiness, which gives a running thread of weirdness to Linda's experiences in the house. Or, to put it bluntly, someone not listening to the sage advice of another, clearly much wiser, character, even though we, the audience, know it to be true? He has had a life-long, torrid, love affair with Horror films. The most notable of these occurs in the first instance of real horror. What makes Next of Kin different and, dare I say, so very intriguing, is how very sane our hero appears to be. Overall, this is a film which very much has its moments, throwing in some surprising ultraviolence too, though some of the disparity in pace dents the goodwill somewhat.
I won't reveal any more of the plot, because the film benefits hugely from it's sense of bewilderment, but hold on to your seats, as, after building slowly the story finally culminates in a gripping struggle for survival as Linda finally learns the truth behind the mystery. A bit of a lost classic and deserving of a revival; Next of Kin is a neat gothic mystery where the clue is in the title! A young woman named Linda returns to take ownership of it after her mother's death, but soon after arriving she finds that there are several mysteries concerning what happened while her mother was in charge, plus she begins to feel threatened by a malevolent presence that creeps about the house after dark. Barton acts in a suspiciously aloof fashion and is evasive of the details of Linda's past, including information on her unstable aunt Rita who may possibly be the malevolent presence residing in the house. She also gets to know her late mother better once she discovers her diary; in it, her mother believed the property to be haunted, as several of the residents died under mysterious circumstances. Following the recent death of her mother, Linda Kerin returns to take over her sprawling family residence, which is now being run as a rest home for the elderly.
But take a minute to consider one fairly radical idea. While not exactly well-known outside its country of origin, it has generally received praise those who have seen it, most notably by , who has compared its atmosphere and pacing to that of. This sense of disbelief is conveyed through some brave technical choices. It soon becomes apparent that , and that something wants Linda dead. Irritation with the ending rises in direct proportion of how invested you are in the film as a whole, which really is a most unfortunate ultimatum. The entire third act has her pretty much teetering on the edge of completely losing it as she is forced to defend herself from Kelvin and Rita.
Aside from that though, I would urge any horror fans to seek out any version they can get hold of, and experience this quiet yet vivid horror treat. Overwhelmed at the prospect of running such a huge operation, she leans on head nurse Connie Gerda Nicolson — Gallipoli and Dr. This may have been a relatively low budget venture, but framing, lighting and colours are all handled with considerable skill, with several particularly stylish camera angles every few minutes. Barton are found dead, having been stabbed to death, in a bloody bathtub. However, while on a day trip to settle her mother's estate, strange deaths start occurring in the home. Barton by Rita, further suggesting that her supposedly dead aunt is still alive.
The finale goes a bit awry although Linda finally kicks-ass, there are still several loose ends that are never made any tighter, but this is one little gem that has somehow remained out of circulation for a while. Linda suspects long-serving Montclare housekeeper Connie Gerda Nicolson and local physician Dr. It remains ambiguous, and impressively so, with a good deal of elbow room left for interpretation. This is odd, given that the film is such a slow burner, for the most part; very little actually happens over the first hour. Ryan used to live there as Rita twenty years ago before Linda's mother had her sent away to an insane asylum, but she returned and began a killing spree. On one hand, it holds off on the plot exposition, leaving Linda to face things on her own and keeping the audience as much in the dark as she is, wondering whether the scares she is experiencing are supernatural in origin, or not. The second involves Linda finding a under her bed during the scene where the power goes out.
Possibly also a case of , as she attacks her niece for the actions of her mother, intending to frame her for the murders and take over Montclare. The combined effect of these achievements is that the film's plot is vividly played out, and the tension is really racked up as events start to turn increasingly more macabre. Later, while going through the family's financial records, she notices dubious payments made to Dr. Barton confess that they had both lied to her about the nature of the suspicious deaths, both past and present. The film is very much centred on Linda, with not that much coming from the other characters in the film really, and to be fair to Kerin, she does a decent job, although her responses to what is happening to her can be hard to relate to; things which ought to have her in bits seem not to, whereas quite ordinary things generate hysterics.