A tense, atmospheric and visually rich psychological horror thriller, Rabbit marks the arrival of director Luke Shanahan, with his feature film debut strong in ideas and presentation.

Some films just grab you from its openings frame. Rabbit is one of those films. With booming, synth heavy score from Michael Darren (One Eyed Girl), we witness a young woman running in fear from someone, or something, through the South Australian woodlands, as masked assailants watch on. Alas, it was only a nightmare. Or was it? This is the question that haunts Maude (Adelaide Clemens), a medical student who returns to her home in South Australia, convinced that her long missing and feared dead twin sister Cleo (Clemens, again) is still alive and held captive. Along with her sister’s fiancé Ralph (Alex Russell) and dogged police detective Henry (Johnny Pasvolsky), they follow Maude’s visions, which lead to the mysterious Dr Nerida (Veerle Baetens) and…you’ll have to watch the film to know the rest.

To say Rabbit defies expectations is an understatement. While many will expect a grizzly slasher film of the Wolf Creek variety, Shanahan instead delivers a film bursting with ideas that are as mysterious as they are compelling. It’s stock in trade is that of foreboding. As this mystery of a long-lost twin sisters skews through different twists and turns, we never know where Shanahan will take us, and what awaits when we get there.

The world which he has created is one filled with bad people with even worse intentions. Yet his monsters are deceptively sensitive creatures, as personified in Baetens complex and mesmerising performance as a scientist who is as mad as she is seductive. Great too is Adelaide Clemens as the main protagonist Maude, a role that demands much in the way of physical and emotional investment, which Clemens delivers. Almost every frame of Rabbit features Clemens as either Maude or Cleo, and the Brisbane born actor brings much in the way of grit and emotional complexity to the screen.

There are some issues found in Rabbit, to be sure. Pacing is a problem during the films middle act, which is not mush of a surprise considering the films thunderous and engrossing opening. Yet there is no denying this is a debut film of assured filmmaking and an assured filmmaker. Here’s hoping Shanahan keeps producing more work of this skill and style.