Monkey Puzzle

Aroview: A camping trip in search of a rare tree goes pear-shaped for a group of Aussie twenty-somethings as they lose their bearings and their patience with each other in the Blue Mountains.

Inexplicably allowing a brooding drug dealer along for the journey, who ultimately serves as a much-needed source of sinister ambiguity, the party swiftly turns from frisky to fraught, as psycho-sexual tensions and secrets are brought to bear on the atmosphere of distrust and disorientation. A glaring metaphor for a generation adrift, this builds tension nicely for the first hour, queasily suggestive, but misses opportunities to exploit the spookiness of the setting, and peters out where it ought to have petrified.