The defence The Arthouse Gremlin
“Its refusal to behave is the point.”
The strange choices create the kind of friction that follows you out of the theatre and into the argument.
Back to trending 
The Last Wave
Drama · Mystery · Horror · 1977
A Sydney lawyer defends five Aboriginal people in a ritualised taboo murder and in the process learns disturbing truths about himself and premonitions.
Movie details
The Last Wave
“Hasn't the weather been strange ...could it be a warning?”
1977 Drama · Mystery · Horror 1h 46m
Critical arithmetic
The consensus, allegedly.
Scores change. Arguments endure.
IMDb
6.9 / 10
12K votes
Rotten Tomatoes
78 %
Tomatometer
Metacritic
85 / 100
Metascore
TMDB
6.7 / 10
Community rating
External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.
A Sydney lawyer defends five Aboriginal people in a ritualised taboo murder and in the process learns disturbing truths about himself and premonitions.
CriticWise case file
What this film says about your taste.
Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.
The archetype split
Who fights over The Last Wave?
For the defence
The Arthouse Gremlin
“The stranger, the better.”
Read their case For the prosecution
The Popcorn Loyalist
“Big screen, big feelings, no apologies.”
Read their objectionThe split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.
Taste neighbourhood
Nearby on the taste map.
TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.
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The Gift
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Ginger Snaps
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It Comes at Night
Drama · 2017
Secure within a desolate home as an unnatural threat terrorizes the world, a man has established a tenuous domestic order with his wife and son, but this will soon be put to test when a desperate young family arrives seeking refuge.
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Where it lives
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Streaming availability data supplied by JustWatch.
Names above the title
The people responsible.
Cast & crew
Directed by
Peter Weir
Written by
Peter Weir · Petru Popescu · Tony Morphett
Richard Chamberlain
David Burton
Olivia Hamnett
Annie Burton
David Gulpilil
Chris Lee
Frederick Parslow
Rev. Burton
Vivean Gray
Dr. Whitburn
Athol Compton
Billy Corman
Peter Carroll
Michael Zeadler
Court is in session
Put The Last Wave on trial.
Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.
The prosecution The Popcorn Loyalist
“Oddness is not depth.”
A film can break every rule and still leave nothing behind but the memory of how hard it tried to be singular.