A faithful and efficient adaptation of the popular crime novel by Jane Harper, Robert Connolly’s film was the local cinematic success story of early 2021. But considered in the context of recent Australian genre works that have capably straddled the increasingly blurred divide between big and small screen, the film is disappointingly lacking in some essential cinematic qualities, Mel Campbell argues.
Jane Harper’s debut novel The Dry was optioned for the screen before it was even published.1 Set in the fictional drought-stricken rural community of Kiewarra, where the sun beats down relentlessly on buried secrets, the novel tells a gripping mystery story that foregrounds mood and setting in a way that reads like a screen treatment.
But would it be a big- or small-screen story? The obvious choice would have…
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Metro (Digital) - 1 Issue, No. 208