DARK PLACES

Coming Home in the Dark is the kind of tale to keep a catastrophiser up at night, seeing shadows on the walls; a tiny package of menace that unfurls to devastating ends. In Owen Marshall’s short story, a cookie-cutter family — husband, wife, two adorable kids — hit the road, journeying to an idyllic picnic spot on the outskirts of Wellington. There, they are met by two men, who proceed to kidnap them for a horrifying night of the soul. It’s a scenario your mind might begin to concoct on long night drives in the countryside, when the stars are hooded and you seem entirely alone — save perhaps, for a pair of headlights behind you on the horizon, slowly gaining.

For filmmaker James Ashcroft (Ngāti Kahu, Ngāpuhi), who recently adapted the award-winning 1995 story into his first feature, it keys into a specific kind of darkness inherent in many of our very best creative works.

Sitting at an Auckland cafe with a coffee, picking at a cinnamon scroll, the wonderfully moustachioed Ashcroft recounts his own memories of growing up in Paraparaumu. He describes travelling