Caught Inside

This small-scale, lost –at-sea-with-a-maniac thriller made it's mark in the 'Freak Me Out' genre section of the Sydney Film Festival. A self-funded independent production, it's the confident debut feature from established commercials and short film director, Blaiklock.

This handsomely shot movie looks set to punch beyond its weight There's a yacht-load of good actors – especially the 'Monster' and the 'Damsel In Distress character – and the tense situation is well established with the breathless climax delivering plenty of thrills, though perhaps not as much blood and gore as modern genre fans have come to expect. With Darclight signed as world sales agent and interest coming from international festivals, this handsomely shot movie looks set to punch beyond its weight.

The Hedonist, a beautiful ocean-going yacht, heads for the Maldives Islands in the equatorial Indian Ocean with a party of six Australians on a 12-day chartered cruise of renowned surfing sites at remote islands. The captain (Peter Phelps) reminds them that on board he is the dictator The women holidaymakers are the only non-surfers: practical Alex (Leeanna Walsman) is making a video documentary of the cruise; glamorous Sam (Daisy Betts) is escaping a bad online experience where her privately videoed striptease was leaked to MySpace and scored over a million hits. Standing out from the men is Buill (Ben Oxenbould), a mighty-muscled, lank-haired misfit, at first apparently sweet-natured and helpful, but soon revealed as a sociopath and stalker with a volcanic temper.

Oxenbould is terrific as the King Kong of this island paradise, and Betts is nicely equivocal as the potential victim who sometimes enjoys employing her sexual attraction. A climactic meal scene where the fearsomely calm Bull serves up an uncooked fish is particularly powerful. The actors clearly do their own surfing in some rousing on-and-under-the-waves sequences

"Caught Inside" (2010) is an Australian psychological thriller about a group of surfers who sail to a remote island paradise for vacation. A couple of women join the expedition at the last moment and a series of events turns the holiday into a torturous adventure.

What I liked about this film, aside from the professional fimmaking and paradisical locations (Maldives), was the realism of the story and characters. The film skirts the borders of the slasher genre and I'm sure it was tempting for the writers to have someone morph into Jason Voorhees, but they wisely resisted.

***SPOILER ALERT***

Someone complained about how unbelievable it was at one point when a group of four or five from the expedition "cowardly" put up with the psycho's tormenting antics when he doesn't even have a weapon. But this is where the film shines as a PSYCHOLOGICAL thriller. Bull, the psycho, had gained the upper hand by this point in the story. The others are literally afraid of him and fearing for their lives. They're also in shock since this was supposed to be a paradise surfing vacation. The blond guy with short hair tried to scrap with Bull a couple of times and was easily humbled, not to mention beat up. It's a mental thing. Bull is the king of the mountain at this juncture -- "king" by brute force and arrogance alone. One of the girls, Sam, is anticipating getting raped and who knows what else. The teen dude doesn't know what to do, since he was Bull's little buddy, but now he sees what a total psycho he is. So they're all afraid and considering their options. No doubt they're thinking of ganging up on him, but they simply don't have it in them at this moment, so they endure his tormenting antics. They're also waiting for the right opportunity when their chances of success are best.

I didn't find this unbelievable at all; in fact, I found it very realistic.

***END SPOILER***

If you like films like the excellent "Dead Calm" (1989), be sure to check out "Caught Inside." It's not as good, but it comes respectfully close.

By the way, the Australian accents are thick so I recommend using the subtitles.

The film runs 93 minutes.

GRADE: B+

Predictable but good nonetheless. The 600 character minimum for this review is a bit much. I'm not one to comment on the creative aspects of the movie, just the entertainment value.

I watched this on Prime which doesn't offer captions. As a result, because of the thick accents I could only understand about 10% of what was said. Might as well have been in Chinese.

The male passengers other than the crazy guy were massive pussies. They had numerous chances to put a stop to the nonsense but didn't. The ladies were much more assertive.

The scenery was great, but I could have done without the fish market scenes at the beginning. Very disgusting.

I saw this on the first public screening so there were cast and crew there and the mood in the room of the general public in attendance was very supportive which made it for a very enjoyable experience on the whole.

Though Ben Oxenbould's performance is the stand out for me, the rest of the cast are also incredibly good and deserve much praise. What I liked most about this film was the believability of the characters, even the villain is someone you can imagine existing (and in school days I'm sure some of us met one or two people who were destined to turn out like the villain!). I very much enjoyed how characters acted in a such realistic manner. One of the male characters is completely de-masculinised throughout the villains reign and unable to protect the other characters, or his girlfriend, which was quite innovative and just screamed of authenticity. Too many films are full of testosterone fuelled 5 minute fight scenes, where as this films fights were clumsy and awkward, as they would be in real life.

The 'hero' of the piece (I can't remember the names properly but the brown haired fit looking guy who starts a romance with Sam) is written very well in not being too tough either, he's masculine, and brave, but he's no Vin Diesel, he's just a human trapped in a desperate situation doing the best he can.

My only criticism is that perhaps it took too long to get to the meaty part of the film when the villain takes control of the boat. The last movie of this type I saw was Donkeypunch, and though that was good in a popcorn movie kinda way, 'Caught Inside' is ahead of a lot of thrillers is the completely believable behaviour and realistic and natural dialogue, which in turn makes for some quite edge of your seat moments.

As an indie Australian film the cast and crew have done incredibly well in pulling together this enjoyable and tense little film and I'd definitely be proud to see it go overseas and do the indie festival circuits.

A plot is simple.

Surfers went in open sea to enjoy waves while spending some time on a ship.

There is a sex-game here.

Lustful noise irritates the less advantaged on a ship naturally.

To restore a social justice by way and logic too often happened in a real life, strong male made advances to a willing female.

She refused to submit.

He insisted and actions followed.

A bit boring story of behavioural patterns different people exhibit in a space closed.