IF you’ve been feeling a little lethargic this winter, then perhaps you should check out this week’s new releases because heart-pounding thrills seem to be a running theme.

Blink Twice is the directorial debut feature of actor Zoe Kravitz, who also co-wrote this tale about a waitress and her friend who get caught up with a billionaire tech mogul and invited to his private island for a few days.

Not everyone is who they seem to be, and paranoia begins to grow as people disappear and those left behind begin to question their sanity.

It seems well-trod territory for a psychological thriller, but what really impresses about this film is the cast – a murderers row of familiar faces including Channing Tatum, Christian Slater, Kyle MacLaughlin, Geen Davis and even ‘the kid from The Sixth Sense’ Haley Joel Osment.

A good looking cast, a cynical sense of humour and a lack of strong competition at the cinemas makes this one worth taking a chance on.

Not to be outdone in the stakes of youthful violence and unreliable narration is Strange Darlings, an outright horror film that is cryptically being described as “a cat and mouse game played in the last month of a serial killer”.

Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner play the young leads, but even the trailers and marketing around the film are being cagey around who is playing the victim and who is playing the villain.

Writer and director JT Mollner has crafted this film around the familiarity and expectation audiences have with these kinds of movies.

Evoking something of the spirit of cheap, straight to video exploitation films of the 80s this may be a bit too intense and nasty for some, but it will certainly be memorable for anyone brave enough to give it a try.

Shifting the tension from violence to survival is the 2023 French Film Suddenly, an adaptation from the novel Soudain, seuls by French author and sailor Isabelle Autissier.

Ben and Laura (Gilles Lellouche and Mélanie Thierry) are an adventurous, globe-trotting couple who set out to sail the world together.

A sudden storm strands them on a remote island near the Antarctic coast, and the film becomes a tale of perseverance against the odds to stay alive, stay safe and stay together.

Director Thomas Bidegain has an incredible eye and the cinematography of this film looks incredible.

This is one case where the foreign language of this film will be less of an issue for English-speaking audiences, as the nature of the story makes dialogue less important than watching what the characters must do to survive.

Finally, for those after something a little sweeter and sadder, Take My Hand opens this week.

An Australian film starring Radha Mitchell as a widow and mother of three who is diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.

When these circumstances force her to return to her childhood home, she rekindles a romance with her childhood sweetheart.

It appears to be a debut for Aussie filmmaker John Raftopoulos, who has made the impressive choice to make a drama that will play to a broad audience, and not a more limited, genre piece like many others getting their start down under.

Whatever your mileage for this kind of film, it is important to note that this is exactly the kind of film that we want to see coming out of Australia and doing well.

By Lindsay HALL