Review: Coffin Rock

Set in a small South Australian fishing village, Lisa Chappell and Robert Taylor are a couple trying without success to conceive, whilst also trying not to have their marriage entirely collapse from underneath them, despite their obvious love for one another. Taylor is worried about shooting blanks, and Chappell suggests a trip to an IVF clinic, which macho Taylor is reluctant about. Sometime after, while anxiously awaiting the results, the couple get into a bit of a tiff. Enter young Irishman Sam Parsonson, who works at the same fishing place as Taylor, and funny thing has it, his previous job was working at an IVF clinic. He starts taking an interest in Chappell, and in a moment of drunken weakness, something happens between the two (which Chappell gets less and less interested in the longer it goes on). Unsurprisingly, Chappell ends up pregnant, Taylor is overjoyed at what he thinks is his kid, and Parsonson, thinking the kid is his starts to go unhinged and stalker-ish after guilt-ridden Chappell’s constant rejection of him, ever since their one unfortunate night together.

This 2009 Aussie psychological thriller-melodrama from debut writer-director Rupert Glasson is a bit of a chore. Do we really need to be making our own “Fatal Attraction”? And with a Mrs. Robinson twist to boot? And instead of boiling a bunny we get...well, let’s just say animal lovers beware. Actually, in addition to the “Fatal Attraction”-style of thriller, the film reminded me a bit of some of the minor genre entries we made in the late 70s like “Summerfield” (which also wasn’t very good). It has also been marketed as being from the producer of the much better Aussie horror flick “Wolf Creek”, which, whilst technically accurate, is awfully misleading. It’s nowhere near the same kind of film, so beware.

The film’s a pretty dull, uninspired affair, with Chappell and Parsonson both a bit miscast. The TV actress Chappell is better than usual (I’m not a fan, sorry), but dull and not nearly desirable enough to be the object of some wet-mouthed sicko’s lust. Parsonson, meanwhile is too much of a wet-mouthed (if foul-mouthed), wimpy little lamb to be intimidating enough of a psycho, and is boring to boot. Veteran character actor Taylor tries hard in a literally ineffectual role. It’s just not a role he can do anything with. So that’s three boring-arse people to spend 90 minutes with in a plot recycled from a hundred different movies, and even a rural setting that evokes the overrated “Straw Dogs”. It all adds up to nothing much at all, certainly very little of interest or appeal. It’s nice to see that we’re making different genre films over the last couple of decades, and the film is nice to look at, but there just wasn’t much here for me. The story seems to have no real point to me. Was the film suggesting a morality lesson from Chappell’s drunken behaviour? Not really, because Parsonson’s mental instability and violent behaviour supersedes any wrongdoing on Chappell’s part. And besides, Chappell, despite being dull, is far more likeable here than Michael Douglas in “Fatal Attraction”. Meanwhile, talented character actors Geoff Morrell and Terry Camilleri are totally wasted in nothing parts, so the film isn’t even very effective from a character-based drama perspective, either.

Maybe if you’re a fan of these sorts of psycho-thrillers (there must be someone out there who watches these things, they’re being churned out all the time in the US alone, it seems) and can stomach Chappell more than me, you’ll get something more out of this than I did.

Rating: C-