Coming Home in the Dark is a New Zealand Horror Thriller movie by James Ashcroft, based on the short story by the same name.
Alan "Hoaggie" Hoaganraad (Erik Thompson) is a school teacher who's decided to take his family, consisting of his wife Jill (Miriama McDowell), and her sons Jordan (Frankie Paratene) and Maika (Billy Paratene), on a road trip and hike through the wilderness.
While they're camping, the family is approached by two robbers, Mandrake (Daniel Gillies) and Tubs (Matthias Luafutu). After learning Alan's surname, the nature of their crime takes a sharp turn: Mandrake pulls a rifle out on them, shoots the kids, and the two take Hoaggie and Jill on a trip through the countryside that could be their end.
The film was released on January 30th, 2021.
Coming Home in the Dark contains examples of:
- Beard of Evil: Mandrake has a scraggly beard, and is a psycho with no qualms about murdering people, regardless of their age.
- Bloody Handprint: Mandrake leaves one on the gas station door still after strangling the attendant into unconsciousness.
- Bludgeoned to Death: Mandrake does this to the gas station attendant with a fire extinguisher.
- Boarding School of Horrors: Alan is revealed to have been briefly employed at an extremely abusive school that became notorious for its extreme punishments and discipline against its student, who have more often than not turned out like Mandrake and Tubs.
- Boom, Headshot!: How Tubs kills Mandrake with his own gun.
- But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Alan has few hang-ups from his time teaching at an abusive school, while the trauma following Mandrake and Tubs through their whole lives. Mandrake even points out at the end that if he personally wasn't the victim of the story of abuse that Alan retells (which affects him deeply), it would have just been some other boy.
- Chekhov's Gun: Subverted. One of the boys' phones is taken away and put in the glove compartment, which seems to foreshadow its use after the criminals destroy the family's guns. However, they never manage to actually use it before Mandrake breaks it.
- The Dog Bites Back: After seeing how Tubs is aghast at the sight of Mandrake murdering the teenagers, he does his best to invoke this trope by pointing out that he's gone from one cage to another and is living under Mandrake's thumb. It doesn't totally take, but Tubs does end up killing Mandrake in the end — though even that is left ambiguous as to whether he was taking his revenge or just putting the incoherent and brain-damaged Mandrake out of his misery.
- Door Fu: At one point, Hoaggie kicks the backseat door open into Tubs' face when he goes to open it, and uses it as an opportunity to escape.
- Downer Beginning: The very first scene is a shot of an abandoned car with what's implied to be a corpse inside, evidently an early victim of Mandrake and Tubs. We get only a bit of time with Alan and Jill's family before they encounter the criminals, and the teenagers are suddenly killed.
- Downer Ending: Almost every character introduced dies or has their fate left ambiguous. At least Tubs has found some peace and Mandrake is finally dead, but it's very, very little consolation.
- Everyone Has Standards: Tubs has no qualms about most of the murders, but is upset when Mandrake kills the teenagers after promising to let them go.
- Faux Affably Evil: Mandrake casually strikes up a cheery conversation with Jill and Alan as if he hadn't murdered their sons just hours beforehand, but it's clear that he absolutely loathes Hoaggie and is fully intending to murder him for revenge.
- For the Evulz: Mandrake brutally murders a gas station attendant whose attention Hoaggie fails to grab for seemingly no other reason than just to traumatize him.
- From Bad to Worse: The family encounters a pair of violent criminals while hiking, and given the early implication that they murder their victims, the fact that they're forced to lie down huddled together is a dangerous warning that they're about to be killed... only for Mandrake to spare them after hearing Alan's nickname. Only so that he can kill the boys and kidnap the surviving couple for a nightmarish road trip that makes the initial threat seem downright pleasant in retrospect.
- Hero with a Unique Name: Played for Drama with Hoaggie, whose distinct surname in New Zealand is so memorable that Mandrake remembers it decades later.
- Hope Spot: Alan manages to flee the men and attempts to get help from a group of teenagers, only for Mandrake to catch up to him and kill the latter for their trouble.
- In the Hood: Tubs is wearing a filthy hoodie when he first appears with Mandrake, and he's a violent drifter.
- Left Hanging:
- Jill's fate isn't revealed. She's shown floating in the river at the end of the film, but with the angle, it's impossible to tell if she's alive or not.
- When Mandrake kills the group of teenagers Alan encounters, one gets away, but is never shown again.
- It's never confirmed if Mandrake was the punished child from the story Alan is forced at gunpoint to recount. The visible tears in his eyes and his remarks during his final confrontation with Alan suggest that he was the child, while others take his statement literally and posit that he wasn't the same boy, but the trauma of witnessing it stayed with him well into adulthood.
- Mercy Kill: Implied with Tubs to Mandrake, who by that point was hardly functional anyway.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Hoaggie and Jill watch Jill's kids get shot before their eyes.
- Playing Possum: In the abandoned school, when Mandrake thinks he killed Hoaggie, we see Hoaggie's hand clutching a rock, indicating that he's doing this.
- The Quiet One: Tubs is a man of few words, in contrast to Mandrake's chatty charisma.
- Rescue Equipment Attack: Mandrake chokes a gas station attendant to unconsciousness. He then enters the gas station, comes out with a fire extinguisher, and repeatedly bashes the attendant's head with it until he crushes it.
- The Reveal: Hoaggie briefly taught at an abusive correctional school. Though he insists that he didn't personally have a hand in the abuse, Mandrake and Tubs see it very differently.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Jill is so disgusted by Alan after the latter's confession about his role in an abusive school that when her life is threatened yet again, instead of fighting to stay alive with him, she chooses to jump off a bridge and into a river.
- Shout-Out: When Mandrake asks for the names of Jordan and Maika, he first guesses "Thompson and Thomson?".
- Soft-Spoken Sadist: Mandrake. He probably shouts once or twice, but for the most part, he never raises his voice above casual conversation, even as he commits multiple murders.
- Would Hurt a Child: Mandrake's big Establishing Character Moment is casually killing both of Jill's young teenage sons with zero remorse. He also kills a number of teenagers Alan attempts to flag down for help.
