My expedition into bygone Australian cinema continues with Next of Kin, a
film which feels like a fever dream beneath yellowing wallpaper. Directed with
patience, the story follows Linda Stevens, who inherits Montclare, a sprawling
rural estate now functioning as a nursing home. An inheritance is one of horror’s
cozier entry points; the creaking doorway through which people wander before
discovering they’ve inherited not solely property, but history. Here, our bequeathment
arrives wrapped in storm clouds and grief.
Montclare itself becomes an organism. During Linda’s
first nights, tempest weather rolls across the countryside, and the film immediately
understands the comfort of isolation horror: the sense that civilization has packed
its bags. Australia’s rural emptiness is captured with elegance, and the surrounding
landscape possesses that peculiar antipodean loneliness.
A young and debonair John Jarrett appears
early as something of a one-man welcome committee, reacquainting Linda with the
estate and its rhythms. Jarrett brings warmth to the film … which is essential
because Next of Kin spends a lot of time tightening atmosphere rather
than racing toward horrors. The pacing is undeniably slow burn – although
‘slow’ here feels a somewhat inaccurate. Ultimately, the film moves like
somebody cautiously tiptoeing through a hallway.
Linda begins reading her mother’s diaries,
fragments describing Montclare’s sinister history. Thereafter, recurring dreams blur the line
between memory and haunting. A new resident arrives at the home, eccentric, adding
further instability to an edgy environment. From there, the film descends
gradually into psychological seepage. Horror accumulates.
What surprised me is how slick the production
feels for an early Australian film, its cinematography possessing a polished, almost
European awareness. Every room … feels inhabited by forgotten conversations and
private terrors.
While we have traces of other films here, Next of Kin never feels derivative.
Instead, it stands as its own strange artefact; a gothic relic hidden beneath
the harsher sunlight of the Ozploitation era.
