Review: You'll Never Find Me (2023) is a Horror Standout at Tribeca
Note: This review was written during the writers and actors strike of 2023. Hear Us Scream had taken a break from posting reviews in support of the strike.
CW: Violence against women
Out of all of the horror and thriller features available for At Home viewing during Tribeca 2023, Indianna Bell and Josiah Allen’s You’ll Never Find Me stands out as a masterclass in creating tension so thick it could coat the back of a spoon like tomato soup. Since the festival, the film has been acquired by Shudder and will begin streaming March 22.
You’ll Never Find Me is a one room horror set in a single trailer in the middle of nowhere Australia. It’s late at night and the rain is pouring down, setting the scene for what is about to be a wild 96 minutes.
A middle aged man (Brendan Rock) sits at his kitchen table as a young woman (Jordan Cowan) knocks on the door of his RV home. He welcomes the soaking wet woman inside as she proceeds to ask for a phone to call a cab home. There is immediate tension between the pair that only continues to grow as the minutes tick on. The man allows the woman to shower, and she eventually does so with extreme caution. The two players are suspicious of one another until the film takes a dark turn to show us the truth of the situation: the young woman was murdered by the man and he is experiencing visions of herself and his past victims haunting him. In the end, it’s clear that in this remote location, you’ll never find him.
Bell’s script shines alongside her directorial collaboration with Allen. The team have created a film that is not only stunning and incredibly visually interesting, but they have made a film that keeps the audience questioning their own sense of reality until the final reveal. Even with the reveal, the stakes reach a climax that returns the agency to the victims of the man’s crimes. You’ll Never Find Me never lets up and does not allow the audience to stop thinking about its circumstances for even one second, proving how successful Bell and Allen are in crafting a captivating feature.
What is so special about You’ll Never Find Me is that we are brought into the minds of both of our leading characters. We are given flashback sequences from both perspectives as well as the thought processes of each person in questioning the other. In one scene the man makes the woman a can of soup which she quietly dumps into his shoes behind his back, signaling that she does not trust this man. In addition, when she is in the shower, she stands in the shower with the door locked and her clothing on for quite some time before trusting that she can safely bathe herself. What could have been a moment of action for the man, he innocently delivers a towel to her post-shower and allows her the privacy she needs to change. Every time one of the two is questioned by the film, their actions prove our (and the other characters’) assumptions wrong. You’ll Never Find Me is a game of cat and mouse where we never know who is who.
Once we hit the big reveal, chaos ensues with a haunting surrealist sequence of the man’s victims surrounding him in his home filled with red lights. We see that the night the woman was taken, it was raining and she knocked on his car window asking for a ride home from the beach. The images of the kidnapping fill his mind and we see them throughout the film because he cannot let them go. Despite even these horrific visions, it’s clear that this is a pattern and that he will never stop. Especially because no one will ever find him.
Both Rock and Cowan give excellent performances that encapsulate all of the angles and turns that the film can take throughout its run. The direction, cinematography, and script all compliment each other and the acting raises them all to a new level. Every aspect of the filmmaking really is spot on and haunting and I hope You’ll Never Find Me has a successful life moving forward.