Critics reviews

The film's audaciously fantastical final scene completely upends the naturalistic miserablism that precedes it, and forces a wholesale reconsideration of the story. You might understand this ending as an eruption of magical realism, or simply laugh your ass off. Though this doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement, For Those in Peril is a strong first film—but still very much a first attempt.

This glum, drizzle-swept, lightly (but not overtly) experimental drama from debut director Paul Wright presents, at the very least, a talent facing in the right direction... Though the spiralling sense of danger imbues the drama with its momentum, Wright is still prone to take cutesy diversions that dull the intensity of film's psychological core. There's also no real sense of mystery, as the film neatly doles out all the relevant exposition within the first five minutes.

It would have been wonderful, in a way, to see first-time feature director Paul Wright win the SFP for his genuinely audacious, though flawed, For Those in Peril. It's too long and too overwrought in parts, but when you get to the final sequence and realise what he's constructed, it hits you in the gut and the mind in a way that no other film in the competition quite manages. It's a pure cinema vision that packs an emotional wallop.

Woven from inspirations as wide as Malickian synaesthetic cinema of vision, urban legends, found footage and fantasy, For those… is full of surprises and unexpected turns, truly an experience that is not to be forgotten. Moved and enchanted from the very beginning, for the whole seance I felt the film was good. But it was the last couple of shots that redefined everything and left me in wondering awe at Wright's craft and work.