Strangerland

The stark landscapes of the Australian outback provide an ominous backdrop for Strangerland, a child-abduction thriller that’s more concerned with atmosphere than narrative coherence.

The film dabbles in aboriginal legends about kids being essentially swallowed up by the harsh barren terrain, disappearing without a trace and leaving distraught parents behind.

In this case, those parents are Catherine (Nicole Kidman) and her pharmacist husband Matthew (Joseph Fiennes), whose teenage son (Nicholas Hamilton) is prone to outdoor sleepwalking. So it doesn’t cause immediate alarm when he’s spotted wandering in the wee hours.

But one morning, he doesn’t come home, and his rebellious older sister (Maddison Brown) is gone, too. So the family, which is new to the area, hires a detective (Hugo Weaving) to investigate, although his relentless snooping for clues begins to annoy the couple.

From there, details are slowly revealed about all three of the adults, including undercurrents of simmering strife between Matthew and Catherine that bubble to the surface. Matthew responds with a passive-aggressive anger that becomes prone to violence, while Catherine expresses her frustration through increasingly erratic behavior. The detective also has a hidden connection to the case through his relationship with a family of aboriginal neighbors.

The evocative cinematography captures a blistering summer in the wide-open prairies, where you can practically feel the sweat and hear the sizzle amid the crickets. Such effort is admirable from a technical standpoint. But as it turns out, the melodrama is overheated more than the sweltering setting.

Rookie director Kim Farrant emphasizes plenty of slow-motion, angst-ridden brooding along the way, perhaps in an attempt to escalate the sexual tension between the characters. Yet the result is more pretentious than profound.

The mildly creepy script is bolstered by some solid performances, with Kidman especially bringing welcome depth to her role, although the deliberate pace becomes tedious after a while. The characters tend to talk slowly and move slowly, which don’t make things very scary or suspenseful despite the frantic search for the youngsters.

After a while, all of the various avenues of dysfunction start to resemble a discussion topic for a tabloid talk show, and the script for Strangerland becomes likewise lost in the desert.

Rated R, 111 minutes.