Who payed the critics

Pretty Good

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

"Next of Kin" is a cult horror classic from Australia. It is effective at building suspense, and has some genuinely frightening, shocking moments.The plot concerns a young woman who inherits her mother's nursing home. Strange deaths occur at the home and when the lady reads her mother's diary, finds that events in the past are mirrored in the present.The movie is less a slasher than an Aussie giallo. It's a violent murder mystery with Hitchcockian suspense touches, rather than the typical hallmarks of the slasher genre, eg. a masked killer stalking victims who split up to be offed one by one, and sex leading to a grisly death.The film is far more interested in atmosphere, which it provides really well.

If this film was an American release it would be held in the same esteem as The Omen, Halloween and Last House on the Left. The fact that is better than any of the aforementioned films is mind boggling. My main criticism is that the tension is drawn out a little too long for most contemporary audiences to deal with. But perhaps this was the director's intention so as to make the biggest impact possible in the closing scene. And to be fair it was made back in 1982.Next of Kin is not genre specific. It is not simply a horror film and utilises elements of surrealism and thriller to good effect. There were even aspects that reminded me of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story The Yellow Wallpaper. It is not without fault but has a sense of style and confidence that many other American classics fail to comprehend.

This was the first Australian haunted house thriller I ever watched (at least I think it was, unless overlooking another one), but unfortunately I can't claim it was a very good or even remotely memorable experience. "Next of Kin" is a slower than slow developing thriller with only a few worthwhile moments but sadly a whole lot of pointless filling & meaningless mystery building. The film benefices slightly from its naturally eerie setting – namely an elderly folks home – and the always secluded Australian outback locations, but the actual storyline is thin and derivative, the lead characters are unsympathetic and – last but not least – the amount of thrills and shocks is unforgivably low. Linda, a young and not-so-attractive woman returns to her hometown as she inherited her recently deceased mother's resting home. She's not very motivated to continue running the place and her reluctance even increases when strange occurrences take place on the estate. The discovery of her mother's diary sheds some light on the uncanny situation within the walls of the resting home, but the sinister events carry on. The attentive and perhaps more experienced horror viewer will notice a detail quite early in the film which will already reveal an important part of the final denouement. The sight of old, wrinkly people stepping in and out of bathtubs does make me shiver, but it's still not the type of horror I anticipate to see on film. The last ten minutes of "Next of Kin" suddenly become extremely virulent and outrageous, with a stabbing through the eye and even a genuine head-explosion, but it's too late to save the film as a whole unfortunately. I agree haunted house movies generally need to rely on atmosphere and suspense instead of graphic gore, but "Next of Kin" has literally nothing.

just HAD to put my comment here. I think that the rating given to this movie is far below what it deserves. I first saw this film when i was 17 and it scared the pans of me. Now more than ten years later i still think it works well. The story is simple and has a few holes but it's got a great soundtrack and very nice cinematography. The acting is better than in your common horror film. I rate this one 8 stars out of 10. And i believe that anything below a five rating is given by people who don't appreciate a good horror movie.