Visitors (2003)
With a good cast, Radha Mitchell, Susannah York and Dominic Purcell. Visitors, a film about an Australian woman on a round the world sail boat journey, could have been a quietly effective little horror film. Unfortunately the script gets it all wrong.
The film begins with Mitchell a good way into her epic journey and instantly plunges the viewer into a feeling of unease. Immediately you are part of her plight, then the film cuts away in flashback sequences to before the sail and her life as she prepares. The rest of the film is fragmented in the same way. Any time tension builds up it instantly dissipates via a flash back, and completely ruins the viewers journey. By the end of the film you couldn't care less if events were all in Mitchell's mind as she struggles to cope with the constant isolation or if it was all brought on by her accidentally killing a crow which landed on her yacht, her own little albatross, so to speak. Its all a shame really as Radha Mitchell is a decent actress and likable woman who carries the film almost single handed, and deserved a better thought out screenplay.
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