Jag

I wasn't expecting a lot from this after finding the tape at a thrift store for a dollar, and reading the ratings here before watching. However, I was pleasantly surprised at how well crafted this tale of a haunted Jaguar was, and it reminded me very much of the great 1970s British series of features broadcast by BBC under the title of Thriller. The US release title of Dark of the Night is a bit more appropriate than Mr Wrong.

Though filmed in New Zealand in around 1984, it has the look and feel of something done 10 years earlier, and is not at all like a 1980s horror film. It also has nice character development and a well-handled plot with a subtle musical score. Some might feel it is a bit slow, but that is more an effect of a comparison to modern terror films that are quick-cut and horror-action vehicles with teens being slaughtered, and with relatively little in the way of development of character.

This film does not stereotype it's players, and give full dimension to as many characters as possible. The one fault it has is a lack of substance in regards to the one who we learn is the killer. But even with this shortcoming, I'd still give high recommendations.

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.

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'

A woman named Meg buys a beautiful jaguar for her upcoming road trip to her parents house. Once the sale is complete, she hits the open road. But late at night while she's stopped on the side of the road, something strange happens. She hears what sounds like a woman gasping for air in the backseat. She turns the car light on and it stops. Then when she turns the light off, the sound comes back. Meg brushes the incident off and goes to her parents. While on the way home, she picks up two hitchhikers - a man and a woman. After a while on the road, the female hitchhiker in the backseat disappears and the man says there never was a woman back there.

The woman she saw was Mary Carmichael, a woman who was believed to have been murdered years ago. We also discover that Mary used to own the jaguar up to the time of her death. Meg believes the car must be haunted, so she decides to sell it. A few days later, she sees the male hitchhiker all around town glaring at her. Is the car really haunted or is Meg losing touch with reality? And who is the man stalking her all around town? All are answered in an explosive ending.

I thought this New Zealand flick was a very good suspense thriller! The scenes with the hitchhiker that disappears from her car is VERY unsettling. There are many more moments like that throughout the movie. The beginning is very well done. The middle frame is a little slow and drags a bit, but towards the end of the film it really picks up. Almost impossible to find on DVD or VHS, but if you can - check it out for sure.

7/10

In a stroke for independence, a young woman buys a car for a road- trip to see her parents only for the car's increasingly odd and creepy behavior to lead her to find out the truth about its strange past and when she learns the dark secret tries to keep it from controlling her.

This was quite the fun and somewhat enjoyable effort. One of the more fruitful areas with this one is the fact that it does engage in quite a lot of really appealing work to convince the car's actually haunted. The fact that it's completely innocuous looking on the outside makes the events that happen in the car all the more frightening, with the strange eerie moaning and the gasping noises from the backseat despite her being the only one in the car, the continuous incidents that she believes have played out yet no one else can corroborate her story or the way it won't leave her alone to carry on her life and keeps dragging her back into the fray makes for some creepy times here. The way this continues on throughout here, from the different points of her breaking insanity due to her false hysterics freaking out over incidents everyone laughs off afterward to the great action presented at the back-end which features her going through the last trick to get them out of the car out on the highway that gives this a solid, action-packed finale. Now, there are a few flaws to be found here. The film's biggest problem is that it isn't really all that well-versed in offering plenty of jump-scares or even features a lot of suspenseful moments here, content to play to the slow-burn as it features her going insane over what the cars' actually doing to her rather than featuring the ghostly actions driving this along. The film really seems to slow down once she gets to the town and visits her family, which really doesn't have much in the way of action that generates any kind of excitement in what's happening. The middle section here ends being so slowly paced that it doesn't really feature any kind of action as it's basically more about her pleading with others to believe her stories and going around to investigate the past that it doesn't feature any kind of ghostly actions at all, and some of the activity featured isn't all that creepy anyway. The idea that the film consists a lot more on her behavior twists at that point onward so it doesn't get any kind of impressive chills out of the scenes with the way it takes rather bland setups as supposedly creepy and can make this one drag during these parts so it does have some problems to point out.

Rated R: Violence and Language.