A Russell Baillie Review - NZ Herald - April 4, 2005
"...Scarfies' scenario of innocents bumbling onto a windfall giving them a crash course in Underworld Studies 101 is hardly new, with recent variations on that theme including Shallow Grave and A Simple Plan.
But it brings something fresh and decidedly New Zealand-accented to the premise.
It revels too in its setting, the dank mansion and surrounding city lending an air of Southern Gothic, while a Flying Nun soundtrack contributes to the nervy energy fair crackling off-screen in its latter stages.
And there's more infectious energy coming from the young ensemble. The quintet of Emma (O'Neill), Graham (Bleakley), Alex (Cohen), Nicole (Seagar) all react to their hostage-taking predicament in ways that show their characters aren't just woolly hatted archetypes, and debuting feature director Sarkies gets convincing performances all round.
Its shift from opening fizziness to black comedy exuding menace, paranoia and contemplations of murder makes Scarfies quite a ride - though its occasional detour into slapstick does loosen the tightly wound tension, and makes for a couple of flat patches later in the piece. But that may be also due to so much of the action being necessarily house bound.
Still, it's easily the most outlandishly entertaining New Zealand film for years - and because of that we could be in danger in slightly over-praising it in that star rating.
But it's a movie that makes its audience laugh in recognition while slipping in the questions: So what would you do? Yeah, but what if the rugby was on?"
