Connor (Alexander Whitrow, who also wrote and directed) has a great little scheme going: first, he fakes car trouble in the Aussie outback. This forces anyone passing him to stop, because over here if you drive right past someone with car trouble, you’ve inconvenienced them; over there, you’ve sentenced them to death. Then, once they’ve stopped, he robs them at gunpoint, forcing them to hand over their keys, phones, and wallets. But wait, then hasn’t he just given them a death sentence? No, you see, because he tells them to retrieve their keys, phones, and wallets a kilometre up the road; the point is just to give him a headstart before they call the cops, or possibly try to follow him. All he does is take the cash from their wallets. He’s not making huge takes each time, especially nowadays when people aren’t really carrying cash any more, but it’s a pretty smart con nonetheless, and he’s apparently been getting away with it for a while. He even makes sure to wear a bandana and sunglasses, and put tape over his number plate, so he can’t even be identified beyond “a white guy in a red Toyota”. Indeed, his only real mistake is driving something that identifiable in itself.
He should have gone with a white “ute” (utility vehicle): the most common car in the outback, so a police detective informs us. A serial killer, less cautious in most respects but better at choosing an inconspicuous ride, is stalking these same outback highways and, due to a few mix-ups, soon enough Connor is suspected of being the mysterious serial killer. Naturally, he goes on the run, determined to find the real killer, bring him to justice, and hopefully clear his name…well, not of all the real crimes he’s actually done, evading justice among them, but of the serial murders, anyway. It’s basically The Fugitive meets Mad Max, with a sprinkling of Wolf Creek and all the other down-under nasties of the last two decades.
Not that Roadkill ever gets particularly nasty. Most of the murders, and almost all of the gore, is kept offscreen. The resemblance comes more in the suggestion of evil, of threat, Australia as Heart of Darkness. And it works, within Roadkill‘s modest ambition. The cast are uniformly amateurish in that amateurish way that’s hard to precisely place – though Whitrow is a likeable lead and mostly convincing – and the script occasionally fails to convince, but a compelling premise, taut runtime, and smart direction mean it works much, much more often than it doesn’t.
★★★★☆