With the advantage of both hindsight and foresight, remarkable events can be illustrated on film along with social commentary, providing a powerful vicarious experience. In fulfilling this potential, Robert Sarkies’ Out of the Blue and its subject David Gray join a canon of films and film monsters that remind us that without a norm to protect, there is no ‘Other’ and without repression there is no ‘return of the repressed’.

The film shrewdly combines traditional cinematic tropes with eyewitness accounts of the Aramoana massacre to emphasise that this catastrophe is merely one in a long line of similar stories the world over, being documented with frighteningly more frequency in recent decades. It does not aim for grandeur but seems to simply assume the position of New Zealand’s contribution to the poignant alliance of locations and people around the world that have now faced their own home-grown monsters.

In 1990 Aramoana resident David Gray killed 13 people in a 22-hour rampage, ending when police killed Gray himself. Out of the Blue is based on the accounts of residents and others affected or involved in this tragedy in some way. The result is almost a cliché of the small town where everything seems to be peaceful and right; ticking all the boxes with a beautiful setting, happy families, pleasant elderly citizens, playful young children, long-standing friendships, a few young louts and of course a town weirdo whose unsettling presence has been brushed under the carpet for too long.

Gray is a monster because he is the opposite of the domestic ideal Sarkies first presents us with. There is no rush to action. The many shots we see of clear blue skies, picturesque rolling hills and wide bodies of beautiful water are almost of tourist-board quality. On a smaller scale there is also much screen time spent on the charm of preparing school lunches, bedsheets drying in the garden, children running and playing, mothers and sons going about their daily business with a gentle rapport, all crudely contrasted with the dark colours and stagnant shots when we are introduced to David Gray. Rather than the smiling faces and dialogue we have been drenched in before meeting Gray, we are given silence and immobility; something we have seen only in the stillness of the calm water surrounding Aramoana, a stillness which runs deep. 

Sarkies does much to demonise Gray beyond the facts of what he did during those fateful hours, but just as much to remind us that he is of humankind also. He is an ‘Other’ to the mainstream, the embodiment of that which we all apparently have the capacity to do, but do not for the sake of social preservation. It is in this thin line between capacity and choice that monsters like Gray are the most terrifying. His composure whilst shooting is contrasted with police officer Nick Harvey’s inability to shoot instantly upon seeing him. Harvey (played impeccably by Karl Urban) is exceptionally humanised throughout the film as a family man who protects and preserves all that Gray is destroying, and the disparity between his hesitation at shooting another human being and Gray’s coolness whilst doing it (interestingly the calmest he has been in the film thus far) is especially effective.

Despite his otherness, we are given an affinity with Gray simply by virtue of our visual proximity for most of his screen time. He is intense but also afraid; a very human emotion. Sarkies draws us into Gray’s fear and paranoia as we join him in the delusion that the police are searching through his flat. Interestingly we also join Gray during each methodical leg of his journey to the bank in the morning, but are removed from him during his outburst in the bank when the monster first emerges, and then are back in intense close-up as we too run frantically from the outburst and stop in a doorway to contain the monster again. Gray is shown to be very aware of what lies beneath, and as we have been through this morning and this outburst with him, we are on side and equally implicated in the desire to keep the monster at bay.

Gray is again humanised as his stand-off with police draws to a close. In an interview in the film’s DVD extras, Matt Sunderland who portrays Gray, says that as the ‘fantasy (is) wearing off in the light of a new day’, Gray realises what he has done and does not necessarily approve of it. This tension between Gray’s ‘darkness’ and ‘fragility’ is perhaps best summed up when he removes his beanie before surrendering. No documentation I can find depicts Gray as a balding man, but Sarkies’ Gray has only half a head of hair. Upon its exposure, Gray suddenly looks human again – he is no longer a monster or a killing machine, he is a man again and a frail one at that.  This humanising and balancing of Gray’s character evokes an empathic response. Gray is of our kind again, but it is too late for him; the monster must be punished.

Amongst many poignant statements made through the DVD extras is the admission that ‘We didn’t do enough for David’. Even the community which he attacked takes responsibility for their role in creating this monster. This is a conscience which Sarkies includes in his take on the tragedy when it is coming to an end. All reports of Gray’s final moments clearly state that he came out of the small bungalow, or ‘crib’, in which he had been hiding, shooting at the anti-terror squad and shouting obscenities. Sunderland does not do any shouting as he emerges from the crib in the film and the only reason for this I can assume comes from what follows. We see Gray shot a number of times as he emerges from the house, then his hands and feet are bound. He does not die immediately, but as he is writhing on the ground in his dramatic last moments, the terror squad who have put him in that state have their backs turned to him, letting him suffer while they stand around smoking cigarettes and patting themselves on the back.

This is a fitting end for Gray, as it is how he appears to have lived most of his life, suffering and struggling while others turn their backs. However, it is mildly encouraging that the film’s cast and crew along with Aramoana’s community took on the responsibility of representing their monster, rather than brushing the tragedy under the carpet as had been done with Gray for so long. The mere fact that this film was made stands testament to a recognition of society’s own role in David’s monstrousness, but it is too little too late. Out of the Blue joins the ever-growing canon of reality-based filmic monsters, existing purely because of our world’s own lack of action and recognition. When will we start to see the elephant in the room before it stomps all over us?

There is no question of the quality of this film; the script, the performances, the costumes, the sets and most importantly the augmentation of the tragedy to wider implications. One can only conclude as Matt Sunderland does, that it is ‘really healthy’ to hear stories like this as a reminder that we are not immune to, nor unaccountable for their ongoing occurence. However, as so many filmic representations of social transgression have done in the past, Sarkies restores order before the credits roll. The elderly Helen Dickson (played beautifully by Lois Lawn) is escorted from her crib by an unnecessary number of anti-terror squad members in an attempt at portraying gallantry. As she leaves the house Helen pauses to reflect on the white sheets hanging in her backyard. Domesticity will endure, however the purpose of another film like this being made is to eulogise not only the innocent victims, but the misunderstood man. If we value our white sheets of domesticity above the exposition of the causes of such catastrophes, then the monsters will continue to emerge supposedly out of the blue. That is, unless we cease to allow them to writhe in pain behind us while we pat ourselves on our turned backs for their containment.