Those Who Wish Me Dead: Neon NZ review

Setting out as a slow burn, but barely igniting anywhere along the way, Taylor Sheridan's Those Who Wish Me Dead is supposed to be a tale of redemption and of survival.

Yet, despite some wondrous framing of the wilderness, and some impressive acting from Finn Little, the film emerges more as a disparate connection of parts, than an emotionally taut and suspenseful thriller.

A pensive, yet caustically dry, Angelina Jolie is Hannah, a woman with demons, who's relocated to an isolated Firewatch tower at the start of a fire season  in the Montana Wilderness. Elsewhere, in Florida, two assassins (Hoult and Gillen, a pair of emotionally blank canvases) are hunting down those involved in "doing the right thing" and systematically wiping them out. It's this catalyst which forces Finn Little's Connor on the run with his soon-to-be-murdered-dad, and into Hannah's life as a fight for survival begins.

Those Who Wish Me Dead has a frisson of a feeling of a suspense thriller that's waiting to burst through the growing tedium of what occurs on screen.

There's an irony that a film about an emotionally damaged firefighter and a massive wild forest fire feels undercooked, but that's exactly what emerges from Sheridan's helming of the material here, something which is technically adept but which lacks an emotional connection when it's desperately needed.

Elements of the mystery are teased out at the start, but generally amount to nothing. A cameo from Tyler Perry is supposed to pull the threads together, but the script betrays its promise and premise with a series of trite bon mots straight from the mystery pages of a script writing 101 seminar. ("It's a zero sum game" and "Assume it's a catastrophe and act accordingly" being some of the worst the dialogue has to proffer.)

And yet, in the middle of this swirling mound of tedium, is a stoically emotionally grounded performance from Finn Little as the traumatised teen on the run for his life, and unable to trust anyone. His is perhaps one of the sole performances that gives the film the edge you need to grab onto for the feeling of suspense. Certainly, his partnership with Jolie gives the film the spirit it needs.

It's a disappointment from Sheridan, who knows a thing or two about tension - from the likes of Sicario to Wind River, he's got form on how to flesh out a story to chilling effect. Here, the story just builds up the threats to never quite letting it explode. In fact, the film is vague in its implied menace, brutal in parts, but largely sluggish in others.

And ultimately, that cripples Those Who Wish Me Dead, a thriller that's largely formulaic and anything but as thrilling as it should - or could be.