The film is directed with absolute certainty by first feature-length newcomer Steven Kastrissios, and follows, in a twisted irony, pest exterminator Christian, played to bone chilling numbness by Peter Marshall, as he seeks the death of the men that raped his daughter into a drugged stupor and left her to die. So numb is Christian, that between his murders, he frequently cuts himself, just to confirm that he can still feel anything. Anything else is an afterthought, and his mission to avenge his daughter is made clearer by the slight nagging at the back of his mind by the hitch hiker that he picks up. At this point, the question is why he would interact with anyone else in the middle of his spree, but it is all too clear that the hitch hiker Alice (Caroline Marohasy) is a direct reminder of his own daughter, and she becomes another burdened passenger of his mind.
The pacing of the movie is so direct to the point that there is almost no time to consider the by-stander Alice as Christian proceeds with furious quickness his thought-out killings. The movie begins with his first murder, which initially has no rhyme or reason until later scenes emerge, his flashbacks trace his grief which amalgamates into hatred. The scenes of violence are extreme but well shot and planned out. There is a trend in cinema for the brief and sudden impact of violence, much like every murder scene in Michod's Animal Kingdom, and it is a much more effective and exciting way to portray the act, almost animalism, predator to prey. However the film did stumble slightly here, a particular stand-out example was a fight sequence in the gym, which saw Christian duel with a thug much bigger than him, it just did not gel with the rest of the scenes and felt slightly forced and overdone. Every other scene was masterful in comparison, his brutal killing methods were cringe inducing even though the camera deliberately did not show them most of the time, the imagination is a powerful tool indeed.
In the end the emphasis on feeling for and understanding Christian's motives begin to be deliberately lost, the eventual realisation is that he is in denial, perhaps her was never a good father, but each of his victims that he interrogates, looking for the next man to blame, offer better reasons that it was all by choice and his daughters undoing was her own. One particular scene sees him brutalise a practically innocent man, and then cut to another scene; we are left to ponder the man's fate.
The bleak overcast atmosphere eventuates into a gloomy ending, and in this world of now grey merciless morality, there are no real happy endings, but it makes for some compelling viewing.