THIS brooding, dark feature from Oz takes as its subject matter a particularly nasty crime and charts the events leading up to it. An accomplished first feature from director Rowan Woods, it looks at the sequence of events from the point of view of the perpetrators, three brothers, as opposed to the victim, making for a particularly unsettling movie experience.

Much of the action takes place within the claustrophobic walls of a working class Sydney home, where Sandra Sprague is holding a family get-together for her son Brett, recently released from jail. What begins as a celebration for the son's return, disintegrates into something more ugly. Michelle, Brett's girlfriend can't understand, why after a year inside, Brett isn't interested in sex. Brett suspects his brothers of stealing a drugs stash that he had put away in a locker in his room. As the beer flows, the confrontations grow increasingly more fraught.

Unusual camera angles and a jarring non-linear narative helps create an uncomforatble intensity throughout. But it is David Wenham as the manipulative, dangerous, but superficially appealing Brett, that keeps you on a knife edge throughout. Thoroughly convincing performances by the rest of the cast, all of whom live in the shadow of Brett, conveys a strong sense of the futility of their lives. Even the one ray of hope, Sandra Sprague's love for her boys (heart-rending performance by Lynette Curran) is quickly dashed on the hard rock of reality. Not one for the feel-good crowd.