Loop Track review – no escape for tormented hiker on

Loop Track review – no escape for tormented hiker on horror trek to creature-feature hell

Writer-director Thomas Sainsbury plays a twitchy divorcee who wants to get away from it all, but this intriguing journey disappoints at the final hurdle

“I just wanted some quiet. But it’s so quiet out here. And all I can hear is my brain.” New Zealand hiker Ian (Thomas Sainsbury) isn’t so much a worrywart as a one-man anxiety epidemic. Out trekking solo in the forest to get away from a divorce, everything is a source of torment to this clammy-browed sadsack: his blisters, the possibility of encountering other hikers, but especially the lingering possibility something is lurking in the darkness behind him at the path’s vanishing point. Luckily, fellow wayfarer Nicky (Hayden J Weal) takes Ian under his wing.

It’s not clear if loquacious Nicky, a glucose shot in human form, is a boon companion or a further ordeal for Ian. Ditto loved-up Aussies Monica (Kate Simmonds) and Austin (Tawanda Manyimo), whom they run into at a refuge after Ian dodged them earlier down the trail. For most of Loop Track, Sainsbury, also the writer-director, builds an intriguing if evasive rhythm out of everyone’s interactions; he generally takes two steps forward into his own character’s extreme fretfulness, then one step back into Nicky’s horniness or Monica and Austin’s airhead backpacker mores. While the film hovers nebulously between psychological thriller, nervy social comedy and encroaching horror, it feels like Sainsbury knows the twitchy terrain of Ian’s headspace like the back of his hand.