Familys shattered

When six-year-old Anna and her friend Joy disappear, Keller and Grace Dover (Jackman and Bello) and their neighbours Franklin and Nancy Birch (Howard and Davis) are shattered.

Minutes before, the girls had been playing on a dilapidated camper van parked on their street and the van’s driver, Alex Jones, becomes the only suspect and is arrested but is released for lack of evidence.

Disgusted by the investigating detective Loki’s (Gyllenhaal ) lack of progress, Keller takes matters into his own hands and goes to work on Alex.

The result is not for the fainthearted as Alex, who is mentally challenged, is unable or unwilling to cast any light on the girls’ disappearance.

Meanwhile Loki hones in on Keller’s increasingly bizarre behaviour as the latter hides behind bouts of heavy drinking to account for his frequent and extended absences from home.

Loki’s suspicions are further fueled when he discovers half a bag of lye in Keller’s garage.

Then Keller cannot be found at all.

A violent film that sees the thin veneer of civilization of a frantic father replaced by an animal ferocity – and don’t for a second believe Rudyard Kipling’s admonition that the female of the species is more deadly than the male.