A little more tightening here and shortening there could have really given this film more of the thriller edge it feels like it was working towards, only it never quite made it.

The key to making an effective slowburn thriller is to leave viewers continually mesmerized on the way to a riveting, explosive conclusion. But, if a filmmaker drops the ball on this, the result is generally more puzzling than compelling, the core issue impacting this debut feature from writer-director Charles Williams. When juvenile detainee Mel Blight (newcomer Vincent Miller) turns 18, he’s transferred to an adult prison to finish out his sentence. He thus becomes part of an Australian correctional system that eagerly claims to help inmates move toward parole by encouraging contrition and accepting responsibility for their crimes, even going so far as to require them to write letters of apology to their victims (whether dead or alive) expressing their remorse and pledging to become better people. But the system’s blindness to its own naivete reveals itself when officials make dubious decisions for the fate of the incarcerated, such as assigning the newly arrived (and obviously troubled) Blight to be the cellmate of lifer Mark Shepard (Cosmo Jarvis), considered to be the country’s most notorious convict. Shepard, a now-evangelizing inmate seeking to open the eyes and minds of his peers, takes Mel under his wing, But something never feels quite right about that relationship, so the neophyte is soon transferred to become the cellmate of Warren Murfett (Guy Pearce), an aging pri…

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