“MR WRONG tells the story of Meg, a country girl who has just moved to the city and whose new car is making some strange and spooky noises... What's more, it attracts the attention of a mysterious stranger who seems to materialise out of thin air.
“The screenplay for MR WRONG was based upon the story by well-known English writer Elizabeth Jane Howard. Director Gaylene Preston used the genre of thriller to examine sexual violence towards women, and what she calls 'the cinderella syndrome'. Using the story of an ordinary young woman leaving home to begin an independent life who is threatened by a quite extraordinary phenomenon, Preston explores alternative reactions to fear and their consequences, as well as the unhappiness caused by the fantasy girls grow up with of "Mr Right".
“The film won Preston a nomination for Best Director at the 1986 GOFTA Awards, as well as a win for Best Performance, Female (Heather Bolton).” - New Zealand Film Commission; www.nzfilm.co.nz/film/mr-wrong; 28/01/2014.
“Ms. Preston [...] says directors here can ‘define projects and make them how we like’. The “last-cut” privilege is given to only a few of the top directors in the United States, she says. New Zealand filmmakers work free of artistic interference from studios or financiers. ‘They (restrictions) will come, but at the moment we haven’t got them and that is great’. Ms. Preston described the film industry here as young and enthusiastic, but despaired of efforts to make homogeneous international movies. We should use and reflect our own history and culture, she maintains” - (“N.Z Film-makers haven”, Christchurch Press, March 8, 1986)
“Mr Wrong skilfully succeeds at both self- reflexivity and social comment. In addition, it’s a superbly entertaining thriller. Its tight and well- scripted plot exploits many of the cliches and conventions of the genre, while simultaneously turning an incisive and perceptive eye on the ideological substructure of those very conventions. Preston spotlights the inbuilt sexism of the genre and illuminates its uncomfortable preoccupations with power, sex and death, and some of the nastier links between that unholy trinity that permeates the dominant ethos” - (Jo Seton, “Meg and the Space Invaders - Mr. Wrong as a Feminist Thriller”, Illusions, no.2, winter 1986)