Not to be confused with the Patrick Swayze action flick, Next Of Kin (1982) is an underrated Australian horror thriller, which has been championed as a classic by Quentin Tarantino in his appearance in Not Quite Hollywood, the documentary about “Ozploitation” reappraising Australian of the 1970s and 1980s, and the soundtrack is renown in some circles for its prog-synth score by Klaus Schulze from Tangerine Dream. For most of its length, it works against the “Ozploitation” label by being a slow burn, a moody and atmospheric suspense drama. We follow Linda (Jacki Kerin, an appealing lead) who is returning to Montclare, a mansion located in country Victoria that functions as a retirement home for the elderly. The home has been left to Linda as an inheritance after her mother’s passing. While deciding what to do with Montclare, Linda seems to upset the authority of Montclare’s presiding nurse and manager (Gerda Nicholson), and the town doctor (Alex Scott) she’s known since birth is friendly but evasive. Reading her mother’s diaries coincides with strange occurrences in the Montclare house, noises down hallways and mysterious figures glimpsed in the distance. Linda also experiences flashbacks to herself as a young girl playing with a red ball as she walks through the mansion’s interiors, all of which seem to set the tone for future Australian horror films that focus on family issues through ‘bumps in the night’ spookiness (The Babadook, Relic). By the final stretch of the movie though, without spoiling anything, when the mystery is revealed, Next of Kin does kick into another gear and become a non-stop gauntlet of mayhem and terror, more stylistically in keeping with something giallo like Suspiria. All of which is complimented by the sound design and the score by Schulze, which helps to create the strange atmosphere and serves the escalations of pace. Also, it was enjoyable to find within the film’s first ten minutes, a supporting role for Tommy Dysart, better known to Australian audiences as the guy from the 1990s Yellow pages ad calling about his “gogolmobile.” Directed by Tony Williams who wrote the script with Michael Health. Available to stream on Amazon Prime and Kanopy in the recently remastered edition of the film, Next Of Kin is a stylish, unique and satisfying Australian horror thriller. Recommended.
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