You’ll Never Find Me brings new life to paranoia in a unique format, and for the most part, it truly manages to maintain its atmospheric thrill from start to finish. Personally, I’m not the biggest fan of the elevated horror trend because it takes away from the cheap thrills of simplicity and plain old jump scares; however, You’ll Never Find Me uniquely combines the two forms and mixes them with incredible dialogue, that will keep you thinking long after the movie is over. Despite the ending not being up to the mark and coming across as rather rushed for a movie that is such a slow burn otherwise, I’d still recommend You’ll Never Find Me, simply for its sound design and the uneasiness that permeates every frame from start to finish. Plus, it’s an Australian film, so there’s something extra exciting about it. Or maybe that’s just me. For a directorial debut, this film truly amazes in certain parts, and the writing takes the cake for sure. You’ll Never Find Me is entirely set in a mobile home on the night of a storm. The question you find yourself asking is: should you be afraid of Patrick, the loner living in the vehicle, or the strange woman who asks for shelter from the storm? Let’s find out.
Spoilers Ahead
Why Does The Woman Need Shelter?
At the beginning of You’ll Never Find Me, we’re introduced to Patrick, a middle-aged man living in a desolate trailer park in his RV all by himself. There’s a sense of dread right from the start because Patrick seems to be afraid of something outside of the RV, or maybe it’s an annoyance; we can’t really tell just yet. When a woman frantically knocks on his door in the middle of the night, Patrick hesitates to open the door, but eventually, he lets her in because she’s not one of the trailer park kids who randomly knocks on doors and runs away. The woman is soaked and looks afraid. She asks Patrick to give her a ride to the nearest town because she’s all by herself and doesn’t have any way of getting home. Patrick asks her to give him her shirt to dry on the heater and hands her a towel to get her warmed up. He’s quite an observant man, and he wonders if she’s been swimming. Immediately, the woman seems to panic a little bit; she says yes, she indeed came running from the beach after accidentally falling asleep there.
For the most part, You’ll Never Find Me is littered with uneasy conversations between Patrick and this strange woman. The film initially reminded me of Barbarian, where you feel afraid for the woman who has no choice but to spend the night with a strange man. An immediate feeling of fear is instilled in us as an audience simply by the scenario. However, as the minute passes, you start to wonder if it’s Patrick who is the bad guy or if it’s the woman who has come into his house. Patrick asks questions to get to know the woman; she’s initially trembling in fear. Patrick tells her to take a shower to get warmed up. Every time she asks for a phone or for a lift to town, he asks her to wait till the storm passes and wait for her clothes to dry, or gives other such excuses. The woman starts to panic a little when she finds a necklace with a woman’s name on it. When she opens the locket, there’s a lock of hair in it. It seems the woman almost feels obliged to do what Patrick says, like she’s hypnotized by her fear of him. She even speaks about how women like her put themselves in dangerous situations just because they want to feel the thrill. A “wrong place, wrong time” scenario. He seems to like the fact that she doesn’t blame others for her missteps. At some point, Patrick gives the woman some coins to use for the payphone. He says he doesn’t have a phone, and it’s a bit far out, but she can leave whenever she likes. The woman’s on the verge of tears at this point, revealing how afraid she really is.
Patrick notices the woman never consumes what he’s given her. A cup of water or a bowl of soup. She empties the bowl into his boots, and he sees her do it too. Somehow, this suddenly makes them feel at ease with each other, and Patrick brings out some cards for them to play.
Who Is Patrick?
Apparently, Patrick used to be an electrician, but he left the job after putting a screwdriver in the wrong place and getting a thrill from it. He claims he didn’t quite feel the same when he was being a regular electrician (weirdo alert). An earring in a pill box in the bathroom, a lip impression on the glass she’s offered, a scene in the day when a woman knocks on a car door but everything is hazy, a hammer, and strange sounds from the roof of the RV— All of these are clips we see amidst the conversational plot, but nothing seems to really connect. At some point, it almost feels as if the woman’s lying and her story is changing. There’s a generational gap between Patrick and the woman, but somehow they feel the same kind of loneliness, though one chooses to be that way while the other is forced into it. However, after the boot incident, they start to play cards, and the woman eases up a bit. Patrick even tells her who he is and reveals that he has a wife. He claims the first time they met was at a gas station, where she asked for a packet of chips. She had luscious, long black hair, eerily similar to the woman, and appeared homeless at first.
At some point, the knocking on the door happens again, so Patrick runs out of the RV. At this point, the lights are out too, and the woman hears a cell phone from the back of the vehicle. When she tries to get the phone, she finds the dead body of a woman. Now she really panics, but Patrick returns. She’s already had the drink he offered her, and now Patrick reveals that his intentions were always to kill this woman. It seems he believes that those who put themselves in such a situation deserve to be taken advantage of. At the beginning of the movie, we see Patrick holding a little bottle of clear liquid. This is what he gave all his victims to make them unconscious. When the woman goes unconscious, the tone of the film suddenly changes. Patrick speaks about how the faces of the women got hazy after a certain point. The woman starts to breathe heavily because the liquid has an effect on her and he covers her face with a towel.
Patrick was never married; the woman he spoke about was the same one who knocked on his door (the one he’s been talking to this whole time). It becomes apparent now that she’s not real; this is revealed to him when he finds that she has a tattoo on her torso. The same one he described to her when talking about his wife. This is when Patrick starts to panic. The woman wakes up with a cut on her head. She was killed with a hammer, and she’s a ghost from Patrick’s past. Now, Patrick gets dragged by many hands into the back of the RV. This is when we finally realize that the whole night happened in his head. See, Patrick has killed many women because they “made themselves available” for him. Patrick talks about religion at some point in the film; he says there’s no such thing as a bad deed. However, it seems he’s actually a God-fearing man because now his paranoia comes to the forefront. We see Patrick panic as he thinks the police have shown up at his door. He sees the bodies of many women thrown at him. It’s his guilt that’s manifesting in the form of paranoia, but why? What’s making Patrick dream up such detailed scenarios?
At the end of You’ll Never Find Me, Patrick is forced by the woman who knocked on his door to drink up the liquid. When he puts the bottle down, we’re back to a calm scenario. No storm, no woman, only a knock on the door. Patrick opens the door, and there’s nobody there. He removes the tiny bottle from his pocket and notices it’s empty. So, Patrick’s fate was decided as such. I suppose Patrick was trying to do something to curb his loneliness. Or simply feel what those women felt because he was truly guilty? Or maybe it was simply his mind playing tricks on him to make him repent for his wrongdoing. This is Patrick’s punishment: to live with the guilt, feel afraid forever, and never escape his loneliness.
There are parts in You’ll Never Find Me that are genuinely terrifying. The close crop that is a stylistic choice apparent from the start of the film truly brings chills down the spine because you can see one’s fear so clearly in their shaky eyes or in the small turn of their head. Both actors do an incredible job at making us feel uneasy, and though the ending is quite rushed and changes pace, there’s a lot to see in You’ll Never Find Me.
