Gone (2006)

True, its actions unfold for the most part in a car in the Australian desert, and there is an unavoidable (and ultimately unfulfilled) flirtation with elements from Greg Mclean's Outback shocker Wolf Creek (2005), but Gone follows an utterly predictable road to the bitter end without so much as a single diversion or twist. If you have seen Dead Calm, very little will come as a surprise here, apart from the question of why anyone should have bothered to make a film of such grinding unoriginality.

Just flown in from England, Alex (Evans) is due to rendezvous in Byron Bay with his long-term girlfriend Sophie (Warner) for a backpacking holiday, but before he can get there he meets an American traveler called Taylor (Mechlowicz) in Sydney, and spends the night carousing with him.

The next morning Alex is glad enough to accept a lift in his new friend's car, but as Taylor begins insinuating himself into the twosome's planned trip, Alex becomes increasingly uneasy, not least because of Taylor's unwelcome interest in Sophie. Beneath the harsh desert sun, as jealousy, guilt, betrayal and madness all come scuttling to the surface, the couple begin to wonder, too late, who is really in the driving seat.

Gone's three leads offer performances of finely tuned ambiguity. Evans's Alex has some idea of what is going on, but is compromised from the start by an unfortunate act of deception. Warner's Sophie clearly loves Alex to the end, but also hints at a desire for Taylor from early on. And Mechlowicz's Taylor both conceals and embodies his particular brand of menace in charismatic self-deprecation and laid-back loucheness.