"Later on, when you're looking back at this occasion, I think that right there's going to be the moment you wish you'd done something."
First-time feature director James Ashcroft was formerly artistic director and CEO of Māori theatre company Taki Rua Productions. They waste no time making their larcenous intentions known: The keys to the Mercedes-Benz quickly become the first of the encounter's casualties."Alright, everybody playing happy campers," instructs Mandrake, the muzzle of his rifle butting into Maika's back.
Immediately after the van disappears from view, comes the film's first and most decisively brutal act of violence — Mandrake's prophetic words proving self-fulfilling — particularly shocking for it being unprompted . In doing so, they evoke Michael Haneke's brattishly cruel Funny Games , in which two kid-gloved psychopaths — one of whom responds, resentfully, to the name "Tubby" — inflict a unique program of psychological and physical torture on a bourgeois family holidaying at their lake house.
After the movie's success at Sundance, Ashcroft was offered the opportunity to direct a crime thriller in the US.