Coming Home in the Dark

Alan Hoaggie, a school teacher, is travelling through remote parts of New Zealand with his wife Jill and their two teenage sons. When the family stops to walk and eat in the countryside, they encounter two drifters, Mandrake and his accomplice Tubs, who take them captive and force them onto the road. What begins as a peaceful outing becomes a test of survival, and the ordeal pushes Alan to face a violent episode from his own past.

Coming Home in the Dark is a New Zealand crime and horror thriller released in 2021, running 93 minutes. It was directed by James Ashcroft, who wrote the screenplay with Eli Kent. Ashcroft's first feature, it precedes The Rule of Jenny Pen and The Whisper Man. The cast includes Daniel Gillies as Mandrake, Erik Thomson as Hoaggie, Miriama McDowell as Jill, Matthias Luafutu as Tubs, and brothers Frankie and Billy Paratene as Jordan and Maika.

On IMDb, the film holds 5.7 out of 10 from around 9,000 votes, and on TMDB it also rates 5.7 from roughly 230 votes. A critics' rating of 7 out of 10 from 63 reviews places professional assessments noticeably higher than the audience scores on both platforms.