The first thing that leaps out at you from “Mercy Road” is the loud, insistent string-heavy “thriller” music, a score that’s reminiscent of “Psycho” in its aural urgency. It’s not an over-the-top miscalculation, as it was scored by its director and co-writer, John Curran.

The film is a claustrophic thriller that’s basically one paranoid and increasingly frantic father dashing hither and yon in rural Australia, trying to escape “consequences” for something he’s done, desperate to “save” his daughter, who’s gone missing in the aftermath of a crime.

With a camera right in oil field welder Tom’s sweaty, bug-eyed, gasping for breath face, the music and pace and pitch of Luke Bracey’s performance is all of a piece. “Mercy Road” is meant to wrong-foot us, rattle us and make us nevous-to-the-point-of-panic, just like Tom.

More often than not, that works in this, the latest film from the director of “Painted Veil,” “We Don’t Live Here Anymore” and “Chappaquidick.”

We meet Tom in the aftermath of something, dodging calls from his oil patch job, his ex-wife Terri (Alex Malone) and a couple of strangers.

Something’s happened, and Tom, prone to frantic impulses, is running from it. The “strangers” hint at it, and Tom gives away some of the details.

His ex remarried. Her “insurance” business husband has caused some trouble. There’s a “picture.”

Now 12 year-old Ruby (Martha Kate Morgan) is missing, a hostage negotiator is on the phone as there is someone or some corpse in Tom’s back seat, and the mysterious stranger (Toby Jones at his most sinister) is ringing in and trying to take control, as there was a “negotiation” Tom interrupted with his rash act.

“I’m a mediator of sorts,” the stranger purrs. “I deal only in action and consequences.“

Wait. What?

Tom, given a manic, sometimes over-the-the-top screaming edge by Bracey (“Hacksaw Ridge,” “Point Break,” TV’s “Little Fires Everywhere”), sets the tone here. His state of mind is the one we’re struggling to understand, his “crime” or attempt at redemption act has set him off, and no “professional calm” as expressed by a negotiator or a “mediator” is going to cool him off.

He’s given tasks, help in dodging the pursuiing police (heard in sirens, seen in the reflection off flashing lights) and forced to reckon with what’s happened and his role in it, all as he takes calls and makes calls and drives drives drives in an effort to “save” his pre-teen girl in this real-time thriller.

There are hackneyed conventions in the script, but most are given at least a taste of a twist — Ruby’s “boyfriend” is “older” (13) and thus wiser in the ways of the world. He frets that he might be in trouble, “dating” a 12 year-old. But he tries to help.

“I’ve listened to a lot of ‘true crime’ podcasts!”

Jones’ persistent, droning menace makes us and Tom fear for Ruby’s life.

“In my experience, no daughter was ever ‘saved’ by a father’s rage.”

The somewhat cryptic (easy to figure out) ending is seriously deflating, rather spoiling some of what’s come before.

But cinematographer Ross Giardina’s camera is so tight on Bracey (fisheye lenses in a couple of shots/scenes) that it’s unnerving.

Bracey’s presence has hints of Red Bull consumption between takes — antic and loud. And Curran’s in our-ears-and-in-our-face score ratchets up the manufactured tension more than enough to make this trip down “Mercy Road” something of a panic.

Rating: unrated, suggested violence, sex crime, profanity

Cast: Luke Bracey, Alex Malone, Martha Kate Morgan and Toby Jones.

Credits: Directed by John Curran, scripted by John Curran, Jesse Heffring and Christopher Lee Pelletier.. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:2