Kurt Loder Reviews The Hunter and ATM

If a movie is going to brood, there are probably few better places to do it than the misty forests and mountains of Tasmania. And what better actor to do the brooding than Willem Dafoe, whose chiseled features are by now an emblem of stony concern. Unfortunately, writes Kurt Loder, The Hunter, a new movie from Australia, gives us a few too many things to brood about—the film is a mystery, a thriller, and a (tepid) romance, as well as a tale of spiritual redemption and a cautionary instruction about the incursions of industry into the pristine natural world.

ATM, on the other hand, is a bare-bones horror film that feels a little long even at 90 minutes, thus giving us more time than it should to savor the story's basic silliness. The movie isn't quite as claustrophobic as the 2010 Buried, also the work of screenwriter Chris Sparling, but it's largely confined to a single dismal setting, Loder writes, which hurries the onset of an inevitable monotony.