''Ascendant'', also known as ''Rising Wolf'', is a 2021 Australian

thriller film Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre. ...

co-written and directed by Antaine Furlong.

Plot

Aria Wolf is trapped in an elevator while her father is held hostage by Russian gangsters. She comes to realise she has extraordinary abilities.

Cast

Charlotte Best Charlotte Elise Best (born 16 January 1994) is an Australian actress and model. She is best known for her role in the show ''Home and Away'' as the young girl in the Campbell family, Annie Campbell. Biography Best grew up in the suburb of P ...

as Aria Wolf *

Jonny Pasvolsky Jonathan Marc Pasvolsky (born 26 July 1972), also known as Jonny Pasvolsky, is a South African-born Australian actor. Early life and education Pasvolsky was born on July 26, 1972, in Cape Town, South Africa, to a Jewish family. He was raised ...

as Richard Wolf *

Alex Menglet Alex Menglet, born ''Alexei Menglet'' in Moscow, USSR, is an actor who has found success working in Australia. Early life Menglet was born in Moscow, USSR to parents Maya Menglet and Leonid Satanovskiy. He came from a theatrical family. As a ...

as Yaroslav *Tahlia Sturzaker as Young Aria *Karelina Clarke as Young Zara *

Susan Prior Susan Prior is an Australian actress. Early life and education Susan Prior graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney. Career Prior has worked extensively with the Sydney Theatre Company, including '' Riflemind'', as we ...

as Barbara Wolf *Andrew Jack as Dr Thompson *Lily Stewart as Zara Wolf *

Elsa Cocquerel Elsa Georgia Cocquerel is an Australian actress and model. She is known for her role as Michelle Scott in the Stan horror series '' Wolf Creek'' (2017), for which she was nominated for a Logie Award. Early life and education Cocquerel was born ...

as Chrissy *George Burgess as Sergey *John Harding as Nikolay *Justin Cotta as Anton

Reception

On review aggregator

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, the film has an approval rating of 45% based on 11 reviews. Writing in

The Australian ''The Australian'', with its Saturday edition ''The Weekend Australian'', is a broadsheet daily newspaper published by News Corp Australia since 14 July 1964. As the only Australian daily newspaper distributed nationally, its readership of b ...

David Stratton David James Stratton (born 1939) is an English-Australian film critic and historian. He has also worked as a journalist, interviewer, educator, television personality, and producer. His career as a film critic, writer, and educator in Austral ...

gave it 2 stars stating "The film is likely to prove as great an ordeal for the audience as it is for its luckless heroine."

The Canberra Times ''The Canberra Times'' is a daily newspaper in Canberra, Australia, which is published by Australian Community Media. It was founded in 1926, and has changed ownership and format several times. History ''The Canberra Times'' was launched in 1 ...

's Ron Cerabona gives it a 3 star review noting "while sometimes hard to follow and with some contrived or implausible elements, is impressively atmospheric, well made and well acted." In New Zealand's Waikato Times James Croot give it 2 stars and finishes "Visually impressive, this Australian production may well lead to bigger things for the clearly talented Furlong, but narratively, it's a barely coherent mess that feels like a desperate cinematic placeholder until the global movie industry gets back up to speed." Writing in Variety Richard Kuipers says "Promising ideas turn out to be mostly empty thought bubbles in “Rising Wolf,” a confusing and derivative Aussie combo of hostage thriller and sci-fi fantasy." Austin Chronicle's Trace Sauveur gave it 1 1/2 stars saying "''Rising Wolf'' gets so caught up in the idea of a supposed potential franchise that it forgets to make you care about the film you're currently watching."

Awards

11th AACTA Awards The 11th Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards (generally known as the AACTA Awards) is an awards ceremony to celebrate the best of Australian films and television of 2021. The main ceremony occurred on 8 December 2021 at the S ...

AACTA Award for Best Sound The Australian Film Institute Award for Best Achievement in Sound is an award awarded yearly by the Australian Film Institute for excellence in sound editing, The award was first distributed in 1977 with the first winner being William Anderson for ...

- Angus Robertson, Peter Purcell, Phil Heywood, Scott Mulready - nominated

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ascendant 2021 films 2021 thriller films Australian thriller films 2020s English-language films 2020s Australian films English-language thriller films