Three days earlier, the Voss-Baker family - Robert Baker, Margaret Voss, their 16-year-old daughter Emily, and their infant son, Ollie - had been camping on the beach.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Killing Ground unnerves and compels in equal measure with a grimly intense story that may be too disturbing for some but delivers a white-knuckle experience for fans of brutally realistic thrillers.

[2] Ken Jaworowski of The New York Times, in a negative review, observed that the film "features a man and a woman who make head-slappingly dumb choices... in the end, the most regrettable decision may be that of audience members who fork over money to see the movie.'

He was critical of the tone and content of the film: "...two plots... intertwine and, after a lengthy intro, move toward some revolting cruelness"; "Damien Power, who also wrote the script, cites ’70s “survival thrillers” as his inspiration... this movie has the hallmarks of torture porn: gratuitous slaughter, remorseless murderers and gruesome acts.

"[3] Kimber Myers of the Los Angeles Times more positively concluded the film to be "an effective indie creeper that unnerves the audience with its all-too-realistic violence.

"[4] Jim Schembri of 3AW gave a positive review, writing "The old scary movie convention about something bad going on in the woods gets an inventive, chillingly effective makeover in the outstanding debut film from Tasmanian writer/director Damien Power... An accomplished, edge-of-the-seat thriller."

Luke Buckmaster of The Guardian wrote, "Killing Ground combines great aesthetic elegance - including beautiful cinematography and naturalistic editing - with an acrid, lingering foulness, derived from knife-edge performances and a terrifying premise executed with airtight verisimilitude."

Chris Evangelista of /Film wrote a similar review, writing "The true highlight of Killing Ground is the editing, courtesy of Katie Flaxman, which weaves together the multiple narratives in a concise manner.

"[citation needed] Lucy Randall of 4:3 gave a negative review, writing "While Killing Ground may prove a solid stepping stone for its director in terms of the Hollywood marketplace, the film itself is unlikely to be remembered in the oeuvre to which it speaks."

Craig Mathieson of The Sunday Age wrote "The terror for the audience is blunt and bludgeoning, but conversely Power is an accomplished stylist who adroitly keeps the camera on the edge of increasingly bad expectations.