The restless spirit of the Wild West flows through the veins of Red Hill, a grisly revenge thriller that rides into town with uneven footing. Is it trying to be serious or silly? Funny or frightening? If it could just make up its mind, this superbly shot and performed film might have overcome its various genre contrivances and emerged as a competent feature debut from Australian Patrick Hughes. But as it stands, you just can’t follow up a harrowingly authentic homicide with a scene involving a CGI panther and expect to get away with it…
Things begin promisingly as Hughes quickly establishes a strong last-century atmosphere in the remote country town of Red Hill, which joins Wolf Creek on the list of places tourists should avoid if they have no intention of going home in a body bag. Yet to realise this is Shane (Ryan Kwanten), a young police officer who has moved with his pregnant wife from the big smoke to lead a quieter life. Fat chance. On his first day of the job, Shane’s sneering superior Old Bill (Steve Bisley) learns that the murderous half-aboriginal convict Jimmy Conway (Tom Lewis) has escaped from prison and is looking to get revenge on those that put him behind bars: the Red Hill police force.
Red Hill walks the fine line between genre homage and parody, taking the premise of the iconic western High Noon, modernising it with raw Coen Brothers atmospherics and lathering it with campy B-movie horror sensibilities. While one can admire the tenacity of such an eclectic combination (especially for a first time filmmaker), the result is surprisingly generic and frustratingly fragmented.
As a director, Hughes hasn’t an issue. With the help of Tim Hudson’s starkly lit cinematography, Hughes demonstrates his keen ability to manipulate his audience, particularly in the first half where he milks suspense out of the simplest of scenarios. He also elicits strong performances from both the likeable Kwanten and rancorous Bisley, the former a major drawcard for international distribution given his starring role in the popular TV series True Blood.
As a writer, however, Hughes falters. Leaning heavily on genre clichés, Red Hill struggles to build logically on its “man rides into town” premise, resulting in numerous moronic character decisions and unconvincing narrative junctures that completely unravels the tension. The film degenerates into a generic slasher, the scarred and unspoken Conway striving to be as eerily unflinching as No Country For Old Men’s magnificent monster Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), but ending up more like an imitation of Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th. As revenge reveals itself as justice, the twist ending can be spotted a mile away, but that doesn’t make the final confrontation any less ludicrous.
Red Hill only truly works when it retains a hard edge and a straight face. So why does Hughes insist on blowing so many raspberries?
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