Strangerland (2015)

Best of all is this setting — stark, reddish brown and sun-baked, the sort of place one only goes when every other possibility has been exhausted, and only movie stars could avoid turning instantly tanned and weathered.

It’s hard to get over the movie’s haunting atmosphere. It may be just another story of kids in peril, but this one’s particularly hard to shake.

Intentionally or not, Farrant and her screenwriters leave a hole at the center of their film.

The film remains stranded in a sort of genre no man’s land.

The progressive wrinkles...are both the fascination and the frustration of Strangerland, which strains credulity with its secrets and revelations to facilitate its surprises.