Who payed the critics

Crappy film

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

No through road is another example of Australian cinema pushed aside to make way for films that paint a much prettier picture of the country.I found the film a powerful and quite real look at the sort of things that go on in quiet suburban areas here.The story is simple and subtle in it's unfolding, a man who is very much a loner, comes home from taking photographs at the beach and unwinds with a book and a glass of wine. While almost dozing off he lapses back to consciousness upon hearing a noise in a downstairs room.What transpires from this is a situation that spirals out of control into a finale that is truly bleak.If you want big budget, glossy looks and flashy editing and pacing - look elsewhere. But......if you want gritty suburban horror not too far removed from some of the awful things that litter Australian news headlines, you're in for an absolute treat.Currently this film has a much undeserved 3.5 rating on the IMDb, it's really sad when a decent film doesn't find it's audience.If you do like this film then also check out some of the other brilliant Australian indie cinema out there such as Noise, Rosebery 7470, Acolytes, Storage, The Square and Visitors. You'll not be disappointed!

Overall the film was plot less but it had enough bloody action to keep your average brain dead movie watcher for the duration.What baffled me is that this film won awards! How is this worthy of any kind of award? I do take my hat off to them for banding together and getting this below average story on the screen but that is it. Now to the most amazing thing of our time. How did M Palinkas pick up an award at the Melbourne Fringe Festival for such a pathetic performance? Her acting is right up there with the cast of Neighbors, and that isn't a compliment. Stick to your job at the coffee shop baby. I guarantee that was the last film she'll win an award for!!!

I watched this entire movie and I thoroughly regret it. But, having suffered through it, I tell you without hesitation that it is a complete waste of time.The story is bizarre, but not in an artistic sort of way, just a really lame flick with the characters doing the most ridiculous things.The story involves some dork loner who goes home one night to find a junkie/psycho chick somewhat (I say somewhat because the acting is bad and it's not believable) hiding in his bedroom closet. Instead of him kicking her to the curb or calling the police, they chat. She indicates that she was raped some months ago and now the three rapists are coming to get her. The doorbell rings and it's the local rapists, they politely ask for him to hand-over the junkie and again the dork chats with them instead of calling the police. So the dork and the junkie hold-up in the house while the three rapists wait out front for their leader to show-up and take action. At this point you realize this is a poor retelling of the 'three little pigs and the big bad wolf,' except the pigs are a dork and a junkie and the wolf is a pack of rapists.The dork calls an ex-cop friend to come over who tells the dork he's an idiot for not calling the police, but then the ex-cop goes out to play football in the street with the rapists who don't like the way he plays ball so they kill the ex-copper. Even though the dork and junkie witness the killing they still don't call the police. Later the dead ex-cop comes back to visit the dork in a weird dream-like sequence reminiscent, but not nearly as good, of 'An American Werewolf in London.' Meanwhile neighbors walk by (this isn't an isolated place). And, one neighbor actually comes over to asked if everything is okay, but the dork just tells him to get lost.Eventually the rapists decide to bust-in and get the junkie. As they enter the dork politely tells them to get out of his house, he does his power-ranger stance to show he's serious and then he can-can kicks one of the rapists back out the window. To deter another one of the rapist from entering the dork throws a pot of boiling water in the rapist's face (I'm not sure if that scene was taken from the 'three pigs' story or the 'Home Alone' series).At one point the rapists capture the dork and junkie, and they take the dork out to the garage to be tortured like in one of the 'Hostel' movies. It's not very convincing. The torturer/rapist goes away for a bit, the neighbor comes back to free the dork, but again the dork tells the neighbor to get lost. It's all about revenge now so when the torturer comes back the dork kills him then hunts down and kills the other rapists so at the end the dork prevails.There are a bunch of other things to numerous to mention that are really stupid and incredibly lame which add to making this a terrible flick. The story is just a hodge-podge of different elements pulled from other movies and chopped together to make this piece of trash. There are some movies that are so bad that it's funny and that makes it somewhat good, but this isn't one of them. This is just a really bad flick.This story is poorly written, the direction is bad, the acting is bad and the production quality is bad. According to IMDb, Sam Barrett appears to have had a hand in all of those areas; dude --- try to perfect one craft first instead of trying to do everything at once and doing it all badly. Sadly Sam, you are consistent, but it's all bad.