The New Zealand film RAIN has been given rave reviews from a number of sources, so my wife Frosty and I had every right to expect the best from it. One thing we discovered when we lived in NZ is that 20th century NZ literature has a solid tradition of writers who correspond to the 20th century Southern Gothic writers in America; the schizophrenic Janet Frame, for example, may be the only Faulkner imitator out of thousands of Faulkner imitators who actually succeeds in out-Faulknering Faulkner. (Try Owls Do Cry.)

This tradition, which I'll call NZ Gothic, is reflected in a lot of NZ films as well; you may have seen THE PIANO, in which every scene takes place during heavy, dreary rainfall. Anyway, RAIN (which oddly enough has no rainfall scenes at all) falls neatly within this NZ Gothic tradition, focusing on the alcoholic despair, sexual promiscuity, perverseness, hypocrisy, and loveless disunity of a superficially happy, normal family of four on vacation at the beach. The beach is muddy and strewn with trash. The adults spend a lot of time zombied-out with drinks in hand, trying to talk without slurring and walk without staggering, while the children sneak cigarettes and sips of booze and wish they were adults so they could fuck strangers just like Mum.

As you might imagine, RAIN ends with a tragic accident. As in TIME OUT, much of the movie is realistic, and the acting is excellent, but the situation is very nearly static and the pace excruciatingly slow. Moreover, everything about the movie is much too obvious. The dramatic effects are too obvious, the messages are too obvious, the plot's general direction is too obvious, and for me at least, the final outcome is too obvious -- after the first fifteen minutes I correctly predicted exactly how RAIN was going to end, including the precise form the tragic accident would take.

My rating on the Watson scale: 2