Aspiring actor Max (Simon Lyndon) returns to Sydney from South Africa with his girlfriend, Sallie (Nadia Townsend), to audition for a big part. Unspoken recriminations seem to hang in the air between the tense couple, who go to sleep in separate rooms after Sallie discovers her wallet missing and a child’s elephant toy stuffed inexplicably in her bag.

In the morning, Sallie is gone, and Max becomes increasingly concerned as the days go by and she fails to show up. Teaming up with his oldest friend Richard (Paul Tassone), Max turns amateur sleuth to find his missing girlfriend, with unexpected results. Conflict diamonds, illegal handguns and long dormant family secrets are eventually churned up in the plot’s tide while frequent time lapse shots of the ocean punctuate the proceedings and add ominous atmosphere.

There’s a palpable sense that Australian writer-director Shane T Hall and his cast and crew were trying to make something edgy, urban and genre-hopping. Sadly, it’s more of a mud pie of contemporary thriller tropes that don’t hold together for long. The toy elephant in the room, in this case stuffed with contraband, is the weak cast. When, at one point, a supporting character insults Lyndon’s Max by positing that he’s probably a lousy actor, it’s hard not to giggle in agreement. Nor does it help that everything seems to have been shot through one of the more dour Instagram filters, creating a Sydney landscape that’s unexpectedly colourless and dull. That would be fine if the story had more bite and didn’t feel like an episode of Matlock that wants to be an Ibsen play when it grows up.