Next of Kin

 Linda (Jacki Kerin) returns home after however many years upon her mother's death - home being, in this case, an old manor house in the middle of nowhere that's been converted into a retirement community. Feeling a bit adrift, as the business seems to be run efficiently by the capable Connie (Gerda Nicolson), Linda spends a lot of the first two acts basically just haunting the building, hanging out with an old flame (John Jarratt), and poking around her mother's stuff.

 Soon after her arrival one of the clients is found drowned in a bathtub (in an excellently creepy scene - he's found when someone tries to get in the tub and steps on the corpse's face!). This awakens some mildly Shining-esque memories in Linda where she walks around as a child, holding a red ball.
 Poking around some more on her mom's old documents, she finds some irregularities on the ledgers, and some weird events that had happened twenty years ago. There's also the fact that she hears someone roving the old house at night, opening windows and leaving faucets open. She even catches the odd glimpse of a figure looking at her. It all eventually leads to bloodshed. Eventually.

 Next of Kin's a pretty solid 1982 thriller from down under. It takes a long time to get going, but the characters are likeable and the film's got an off-beat sense of humor I really enjoyed: When a terrified Linda goes to get her beau's help, for example, she finds him asleep at the saddest pep rally I've ever seen. No jokes, just odd characters and situations.
 Director Tony Williams also knows when to add some discordant touches - the first corpse in this movie is really shocking - and his roving camerawork carries a lot of the film. The photography is also beautiful, very colorful; DoP Gary Hansen tragically died in a helicopter crash on the same year this came out.
 The bloody finale has a little bright-red giallo-esque gore and a couple of great action beats, but it ends almost as abruptly as it arrived. As for the mystery itself, I guess its solution makes sense, but it's pretty silly. It's also marred by an unintentionally funny slow motion sequence which also slows down Linda's screams, to hilarious effect.

 It's probably not the sort of film that will blow anyone away, but on the other hand it's an almost gothic, extremely good-looking movie that uses its location - both the retirement home itself and the fact that it's so remote - very effectively.