Director/Screenplay – Tom Sainsbury, Producers – Gabriel Lunte, Jonathan Potton, Tom Sainsbury & Milon Tesiram, Photography – Milon Tesiram, Music – Mike Newport, Visual Effects – Gabriel Lunte, Creature Design – Lara Hawker, Zac Johnson & Gabriel Lunte, Prosthetics – Lara Hawker & Zac Johnson, Makeup Effects Design – Jessica Hunt, Production Design – Gabriel Lunte & Tom Sainsbury. Production Company – Chillbox.
Cast
Tom Sainsbury (Ian), Hayden J. Weal (Nicky), Kate Simmonds (Monica), Tawanda Manyimo (Austin), Noa Campbell (Danielle), Gaby Solomona (Talia), Bianca Seinafo-Tuilaepa (Lulu)
Plot
Ian starts tramping along one of the trails in Byers Park. He is unprepared and nervous, seeking to avoid dealings with any others he encounters along the way. However, the over-friendly Nicky attaches himself to Ian and insists on becoming a hiking companion. They also meet another couple, the Australian Monica and South African Austin, and stay the night at a hut with them. Ian believes that something shadowy is following them. He accuses Nicky of having done something sinister with two girls whose gear is left behind at the hut. The others believe that Ian’s difficulty sleeping and the problems he won’t talk about are affecting his state of mind.
Tom Sainsbury is an acclaimed New Zealand playwright, having written fifty plays since the early 2000s. Sainsbury is a polymath who also acts, having appeared in the remake of Pork Pie (2017), Guns Akimbo (2019) and the horror film Dead (2019), directed by this film’s co-star Hayden J. Weal, which Sainsbury co-wrote, as well as regular parts on tv’s Shortland Street (1992- ) and Wellington Paranormal (2018-22), among others. In Loop Track, Sainsbury not only writes, directs and co-produces but also plays the lead role of the nervous Ian.
New Zealand has odd relationship with the bushland that covers some 33 percent of the country. In a regular American film, Loop Track would be an In the Woods film where the woods would be represented by one of the extensive trails in the National Parks. As in many of these In the Woods films, depictions of New Zealand’s bushland on screens show it as an area where the regular rules of civilisation start to fall down and where it can be inhabited by crazies and killers as in Bridge to Nowhere (1986) or I’m Not Harry Jenson. (2009). Other works like the enigmatic The Lost Tribe (1983) depict it as an area of deeply mysterious happenings. Other films like Bad Blood (1982) buy into the ‘man alone’ myth of the bush as being the place where a person left to survive by their own craft is most at home.
Loop Track immediately holds your attention. Tom Sainsbury’s character is awkward and nervous, seems ill prepared for a tramp into the bush. He is evasive or gives monosyllabic answers when asked personal questions and goes out of his way to avoid dealings with other people, including deviating off the track to avoid passing Kate Simmonds and Tawanda Manyimo when he first spots them. We are left wondering what is going on, what his urgency in heading to the destination is, what secrets he is holding and what the big reveal is going to be. It creates something intriguing, all the more so when the character of Hayden J. Weal’s Nicky is introduced whose sole purpose seems to be to push Sainsbury’s character into uncomfortable places.
The nervous Ian (Tom Sainsbury, also the film’s director and writer) in the bush
I was expecting at this point that Loop Track would be something akin to I’m Not Harry Jenson., that behind everything there would be mundane explanations such as that maybe Ian had killed somebody, was running from something terrible or that he was seeking to prevent/find something at the destination. By about the point that everybody arrives at the hut (around the 30 minute point), things begin to get weirder – with Tom Sainsbury talking about seeing a black shape following them (but there either being nothing there or what there is seeming indistinct when others look in that direction); his going through the camera of the missing girls and finding it suspicious that Hayden J. Weal is in one of the pictures and then accusing Hayden of disposing of the girls and drugging him; all before everybody starts questioning Sainsbury’s sanity and wondering how best to deal with him.
Up until this point, Loop Track works as a strong and well constructed psycho-thriller. You have the distinct sense that something is wrong but everything sits in a place of careful ambiguity and you are not sure what. Don’t read beyond this point if you do not want PLOT SPOILERS – the very well concealed twist that Loop Track holds is that it is actually a Monster Movie. However, this is something that the film keeps hidden for at least 75 minutes of its 95 minute runtime. You have been so distracted by Sainsbury’s awkwardness and mental health questions and wondering whether something sinister is going on that it becomes a surprise when the monster actually does emerge. The effects team produce quite a ruthless looking creature and there is a great to-the-death fight between it and Sainsbury. Perhaps the only fault one could make of the film is that it ends without ever telling us what Ian’s issues are and why he is so haunted and secretive.
