Mr. Wrong

New Zealander Heather Bolton buys a jaguar from a car lot, takes a long drive home to see the folks, and on her return trip sees a strange woman(who she had already seen in a dream) get in her back seat...then a man gets in the passenger seat. She stops car for gas, man gets out, and she drives back home. She works, gets some roses, realizes car belonged to a woman that disappeared mysteriously, and then for an interminable amount of time - tries to sell her car. But what happens...the door won't open when buyers try to look at it. And that, except for the rather tame and lame denouement, is the height of suspense for this literal "sleeper" from New Zealand. Rather than saying I laughed, I cried, and I ran the whole gambit of emotions, I can say with honest frankness, I stretched, I sighed, and I yawned...repeatedly! Who would have thought life with a jaguar could be this boring and dull. A real snooze-fest!

Young frump Meg (a likeable turn by Heather Bolton) buys a second hand Jaguar only to learn that the car is haunted by the ghost of Mary Carmichael (Perry Piercy), a murdered woman whose body was never found. Worse still, Mary's killer begins to stalk Meg with the intention of making her his next victim.

Dark of the Night (AKA Mr. Wrong) is a gentle ghost story/thriller from New Zealand - a little too gentle for most of the time, with very little in the way of genuinely scary stuff. For much of the film, the supernatural happenings take a back set (pun intended) to Meg and her relationships (with friends, parents and romantic interest Wayne, played by Danny Mulheron), none of which is particularly interesting.

Only in the final five minutes, in which the killer (David Letch) finally makes his move, does the film achieve any level of tension or suspense, but it's too little, too late.

Of course any movie buff will think about THE CAR or CHRISTINE, an evil, ghost car, but also psychopath story and he will be damn right. A TV movie from New Zeland and that seems to be inspired by a TV show anthology episode such as THRILLER, ONE STEP BEYOND or TWILIGHT ZONE. It is pleasant to watch and no boring at all. Intriguing film, I guess the non American film industries provide many of those underrated features, and we have to be lucky to find them. Yes, it is tense, with no length to interfere with the pace. It is unusual to melt two genres, psychopath killer and ghost scheme. Yes, unusual.

This movie probably looked a lot better in 1985, when it came out. By modern standards, it's a little too light and too slow for a horror movie, a little too mild and obvious for suspense, and not quite quirky enough as pure film.

That said, it's not badly made. Nicely filmed, with decent performances, and both a truly beautiful vintage Jaguar and truly beautiful New Zealand scenery. The story cleverly combines and twists a few urban legends and ghost stories which -- through no fault of the filmmakers -- have become cliches by now. Again, they would have seemed much fresher in 1985.

The twist ending is pretty clever, although it's foreshadowed a little too broadly. For a small-budget suspense/horror film, it all adds up to 'not bad', but not fantastic either. I'd say that it has the feeling of a made-for-TV film.

What's strange about this movie -- released in the US on video as "Dark of the Night", for some reason -- is that the box boasted half a dozen strong reviews, from "Playboy" and the Village Voice among other sources. It's worth a rental if you like gentler suspense films (no gore in this one) or are a particular fan of 80's and/or New Zealand horror films.

This consistently chilling, finely tuned supernatural thriller from New Zealand has far more poke under the bonnet than you might initially expect! After moving to the big smoke, sensitive country gal, Meg (Heather Bolton) purchases a haunted Jag which rather swiftly takes her on a white-knuckled, nightmarishly circuitous journey into radiator-bursting Hitchcockian fright! The magnificently menacing performance by David Letch as 'The Man', an engagingly spooky text, appealing NZ locations and consistently sharp filmmaking from, Gaylene Preston eerily ensures that no viewer's spine shall go untingled! An unjustly obscure thriller, this atmospheric Kiwi road-creeper comes especially recommended to spook-seeking aficionados of vintage vehicular maleficence!

'Enjoy the ecstasy of abject terror in, Gaylene Preston's gripping 'Dark of The Night', this masterfully creepy supernatural horror, will certainly put your cinematic shock absorbers through their paces! Cult horror fans will most certainly recognise, David Letch from Aussie Sci-horror gem 'Death Warmed up'