Loop Track (2023): Sometimes It Doesn’t Have To End With A Bang (Review)

One of Arrow’s unsung strengths is their championing of worldwide genre cinema, and much as Tartan had done with J-Horror in the early 2000s, it’s thanks to their efforts that films like Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway, Hounds of Love and Harpoon were all brought to our shores. Loop Track is the most recent of these imports, riding the wave of offbeat New Zealand releases started by What We Do in the Shadows, and like that famed vampire flick, Loop Track’s origins lie in the world of comedy.

Writer, director and actor Tom Sainsbury is best known at home as “Snapchat Dude”, thanks to his character work on the app, and his first feature film bears the hallmarks of this experience. He deftly sketches his four main characters within a few minutes of their introduction – Nicky the obnoxious hiker, the newlyweds Monica and Ian, and our ostensible hero. Introduced nervously parking his car at the forest’s mouth (the film takes its name from the trail he decides to hike), Ian never gets calmer – especially when he’s thrown against Nicky (a braggart of the highest order), as they climb the trail together. The two of them make a fascinating pairing as they both suffer from the same intense lack of self-worth, and it’s how they deal with that lack that makes them interesting. Sainsbury’s dialogue is perfectly attuned to bringing out those differences, whether it’s Ian’s constant attempts to push people away from him by refusing help, or Nicky’s constant boasting. For both men, words are an armour to bolster their lack of esteem, but they can only go so far before the facade cracks and the pain below surfaces.

Sainsbury doesn’t give many details about the sources of their wounding beyond a few words about Nicky’s abusive father and that Ian is separated, which is a pity because a little extra detail would have given the duo a heartrending depth. They’re compelling men as is, but that’s more to do with Hayden J. Weal’s and Sainsbury’s exceptional performances than meat on the script’s bones. Yet what’s on screen, for the first hour at least is brilliantly unsettling filmmaking – a tightly wound thriller that thrives on Ian’s gradually increasing paranoia at the idea that something is following the camping crew. Doughy and sweaty, Sainsbury is refreshingly ordinary-looking as Ian, his incipient paranoia and outbursts of shame so much more believable because it could well happen to us at home – and when the filmmaking is as intense as Loop Track’s, that’s far easier than we’d think.

Milon Tesiram’s cinematography favours oppressive closeups of faces, which capture the gradually growing tension of the piece extremely effectively – especially when it’s fixed on Ian’s terrified appearance. Mike Newport’s score and sound design emphasises the overwhelming nature of the trail – especially the cicadas and the ever-present wind in the trees that create almost a wall of sound. Sainsbury’s filmmaking is immersive, and thanks to the experience borne out of his time in 48 Hour Filmmaking challenges he’s able to spin an atmosphere from limited resources.

Given a bigger budget, who knows what he might be able to do next time.

I found myself slightly disappointed by the final act – even though Sainsbury delivers an effective creature feature resolution, complete with impressive SFX. Curiously, Loop Track‘s closest equivalent is Von Trier’s Melancholia in its idea that the mentally different, the anxious and the overwhelmed, are the most capable when their worst fears are realised – the “boy who cried wolf” and survived, if you will. For all those wonderful effects and the strangely cheering message (for a confirmed worrywart like me), I can’t help thinking that something far less monstrous would have worked better.

Ian’s crippling self-hatred is a fixation that swallows his identity until “all I can hear is my brain” – a loathing so vicious that it causes him to lose sleep. His desire to protect himself and only see the worst in others leads him to accuse Nicky of murder in the most embarrassing way possible – an act that almost makes him slink off in disgrace from the camping house. A narrative arc that centred around a serial killer, either one of the campers, or an outside force would have been grimmer, but somehow more satisfying as not only would it have been in keeping with the low-key atmosphere Sainsbury and co. had so carefully fostered, but it could have mined Ian’s disgust far deeper and more effectively.

The sudden shift in genre throws all that careful tension and character work out of the window, and while it looks impressive, it’s a let-down considering what came before. Still, Loop Track is an effective piece of low-budget filmmaking with a welcome dollop of emotional maturity, and it’s another feather in Arrow’s international cap. The Arrow Blu-Ray comes generously supplied with extras including multiple pieces with Sainsbury himself and a collector’s booklet -and there’s even one of Sainsbury’s award-winning shorts, (Time) Travel Centre, thrown into the bargain.

You can also watch Loop Track on Arrow Player

Ethan’s Archive – Loop Track