Turhan Zaeem

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to watch paint dry while being serenaded by a mosquito trapped in a jar, Mystery Road is the movie for you. This agonizingly slow-paced snoozefest masquerades as a thriller but is about as thrilling as watching a cactus grow. Calling it a “mystery” is generous—more like “I-missed-the-road-and-ended-up-lost-in-this-tedious-mess.” From the very first frame, you’re bombarded with endless shots of barren landscapes that look like they were filmed on a budget of a dollar and a half. I get it, the Australian outback is vast and empty, but do we really need 75 establishing shots of dust, rocks, and a lone cow that probably wandered into the scene by accident? It’s like the director forgot he was supposed to be telling a story and just decided to make a really long tourism commercial for people who hate excitement. The protagonist, a brooding detective who must have attended the Clint Eastwood School of Grumbling, mopes his way through the film with the emotional range of a brick wall. His expression is so stone-faced throughout, I began to suspect he was actually a malfunctioning robot programmed only to scowl and occasionally mumble something incomprehensible. The dialogue is so sparse and lifeless, it feels like the actors are competing to see who can bore the audience to death first. Spoiler alert: they all win. And let’s talk about the so-called “mystery.” What mystery? The plot is as thin as the hair on a balding man’s head. A girl is dead, and our hero must find out why, but the film makes it clear it doesn’t care about solving this puzzle any more than it cares about entertaining you. The investigation plods along at a pace that would make a snail seem like Usain Bolt, filled with pointless red herrings and awkward silences that drag on for eternity. I spent more time checking my watch than I did actually paying attention to the storyline—probably because there wasn’t one to pay attention to. The supporting characters are just as lifeless and forgettable as the lead. They pop in and out of the film like cardboard cutouts, contributing nothing of substance and leaving no lasting impression. The villains, if you can call them that, are so underdeveloped and cliché that by the time the film limps to its anticlimactic conclusion, you’ll find yourself asking, “Wait, who was that guy again? And why should I care?” As for the cinematography, it’s clear the filmmakers were trying to be artsy, but they ended up being fartsy instead. Endless wide shots of the empty landscape might be beautiful in a coffee table book, but in a film that’s supposed to be a thriller, they’re just mind-numbingly dull. The color palette is so drab and washed out, it feels like someone drained the life out of the screen—much like how this movie drains the life out of its viewers. In conclusion, Mystery Road is a plodding, tiresome exercise in tedium that fails on every conceivable level. It’s not thrilling, it’s not mysterious, and it’s certainly not worth your time!