It is a unique experience that a native investigator performs by returning to the remote area to investigate the killing of a young girl and find the killer.
Sen (who also shoots, scores and edits) goes walkabout through the minefield of contemporary Australian culture, offering an evocative snapshot of an unravelling crime scene - social, racial and economic.
This sand-blasted Aussie murder mystery tinkers with genre convention while managing to remain sincere and thrilling.
The Herald (Ireland)
August 29, 2014
Aaron Pendersen is thoroughly believable as the conflicted Jay and the blasted landscape is photographed so well you'll be sweating and swatting the flies away from your own face after 10 mins.
Director Ivan Sen's fourth feature evokes old westerns, Polanski's Chinatown and other noir classics, but still feels grounded in the dust and dried blood of the Australian soil.
Mystery Road may be set in modern Queensland but it has the feel of a flinty, slow-burning western as one stetson-wearing lawman stands against an entire community.