AUSTRALIA'S film industry has devised a solution for the neverending influx of feckless European backpackers: they are taken to the outback, tortured and murdered.

Like last year's Wolf Creek, Gone is directed by a first-timer (Ringan Ledwidge) who shows flair for naturalistic storytelling and nuanced acting, edging these films out of the slasher genre straitjacket. Taylor (Scott Mechlowicz) is a young American drifter who encourages British couple Alex and Sophie (Shaun Evans and Amelia Warner) to take a road trip in his battered wagon. But Taylor's soulful face is at odds with his suspicious behaviour and a sweat appears on Alex's brow that has nothing to do with the intense heat. The screw is turned slowly, letting the film's psycho-thriller qualities outshine its psycho-killer limitations.

Paul Lynch

Norbit (Brian Robbins): Eddie Murphy, Thandie Newton, Cuba Gooding Jr, Eddie Griffin, Katt Williams Running time: 110 mins .

LESS is definitely more with Eddie Murphy. There was just one of him in Dreamgirls and it was good enough to win a Golden Globe as best supporting actor and an Oscar nomination as well.

Paramount did him no favours by putting up giant billboard ads for Norbit in the run-up to the Academy Awards. It helped rack up a $34m opening weekend but provided an untimely reminder to voters of just how awful Murphy playing multiple roles can be.

Scripted by his brother Charles Q Murphy, Norbit opens with a baby being dumped on the doorstep of an orphanage in rural Tennessee run by Murphy as an eccentric Mr Wong whose idea of playtime is having the little inmates hold up targets while he throws harpoons at them. Baby Norbit is timid and shy and develops a crush on a sweet little girl who is all too soon adopted, leaving him at the mercy of big bossy Rasputia.

Norbit grows up to be a subservient Murphy bullied into marriage by a now grotesquely outsized Rasputia, who is Murphy in a fat suit. Perhaps this is his way of exorcising some selfhate, but as a running gag it soon runs out of gas. It is filming by numbers, a sum that has become a lucrative party piece for Murphy but no longer adds up to anything but indulgence.

Ciaran Carty