The Loved Ones (2009)

I emerge from an unplanned break from horror, and The Loved Ones wasn't a brilliant one to come back with, but here we are.

This is from the same guy as The Devil's Candy but this grubby little Australian flick did not give me anything approaching the heart eyes 😻 that Candy did, sadly.

Sitting here wondering how to start this review, I was reflecting on our introduction to Lola, the main character, and it only further highlighted to me how aggravatingly one-dimensional she is. Robin McLeavy certain commits as this nightmare in a pink prom gown and Lola is never ever shown as anything other than delusional and psychopathic. Even when she appears by the locker of her crush Brent (Xavier Samuel), she's wide-eyed and manic. Always heightened, turned up to 11. That ended up being my main problem with The Loved Ones. Lola is annoying as shit, so I spent most of the time irritated and waiting for her to die - and even the death scene was annoying, too! More on that later.

There are two "dates" happening throughout this movie. Lola with a kidnapped Brent, and Brent's friend Jamie (Richard Wilson) with a sexy goth girl. This secondary story is ultimately revealed to be a tenuous (at best) link to the kidnapping and torture, and if its purpose was to serve as light relief or a way to break the tension of Brent's apparently hopeless situation, it doesn't really work. There's even a moment where we're led to believe the stories are about to interestingly converge... but it's a fake out. Thanks?

It's hard to imagine Lola existing in the real world well enough to successfully attend school and socialise, but we're shown that throughout her life, with the help of her father (who harbours incestuousness feelings for her) she's lived a cycle of crushes and rejection, followed by capture and torture in the name of her obsession.

Drills, forks, knives, syringes of bleach, a hidden pit under the kitchen; it's all here. Yet, I wasn't enjoying this ride.

When the moment finally came to see her die, she's treated like horror royalty in a Big Moment where time slows down. She watches her death approach, and we watch her watching. It goes on for-ev-er. This kind of end is fit for someone way more iconic and giving her this, when the writing and action have done nothing to flesh her out feels unwarranted and unearned.

The Loved Ones is streaming on Shudder at time of writing. Have I just woken up grumpy from my hiatus?!

Hounds of Love (2016)

Content warning: Abduction, abuse, rape.

Hounds of Love is the debut feature from Australian writer/director Ben Young and another I'd heard whispers about from the festival circuit. It's been floating around on the edges of my radar ever since. There's a special kind of thrill when a movie you've had your eye on for a long while appears on a streaming service.

Anyway.

Supposedly based on several different true crime stories (I thought it echoed Fred and Rose West quite a lot) it most closely resembles the real-life experiences of Kate Moir, and her abduction and abuse by David and Catherine Birnie in Perth, Western Australia.

Like the Birnies, Evelyn and John White (Emma Booth and Stephen Curry) have a disturbing, mutually fucked up and co-dependent hobby of kidnapping, raping and murdering young girls. 

Their latest victim and the one whose story we see unfold in full is Vicki (Ashleigh Cummings), who almost immediately spots the weaknesses in the White's relationship. John, a rapist and probable paedophile with a violent temper, needs Evelyn's help to abduct and deal with the girls; Evelyn, seemingly a victim of abuse from an early age herself, is damaged and manipulated to the point of believing these horrifying deeds count as acts of love. There's an awful lot of awful stuff going on behind the closed doors of this house.

Maybe it's my true crime obsession showing, or that my resistance to bleakness is pretty high, but I didn't find this as soul-crushing as others seemed to (want bleak Australian realism/nihilism? May I suggest The Snowtown Murders. Note "suggest" and not "recommend"). 

Hounds of Love is some of the worst of what humans are capable of, shown convincingly and without exploitation (at least in tone, as Kate Moir has gone on record as saying she was upset at the startling similarities). All three leads are incredibly strong, with a special mention for Cummings, who manages to convey so much when most of the time she's bound and gagged.

Young's vision for this is pretty spectacular, given it was shot in 20 days and was his first feature. He knows what to linger on: the stillness, hopelessness, the surrounding suburban normality; and what is going to be more upsetting to imply than outright show: the detritus left after a rape, the killing of a dog ☹. The cinematography (hat tip to Michael McDermott) is beautiful, dare I say it. It's as stunning as the subject matter is stomach-churning, looking almost fashion editorial/music video perfect in some moments.

It's not without a problematic cloud around it, but if you don't mind that and feeling like your heart is in your throat for 90mins, it's streaming on Hulu now.

Killing Ground (2016)

Killing Ground is an Australian Eden Lake, only with some timeline quirks, rape, baby violence, and a dog that actually survives (as far as we know).

To be honest I'm currently experiencing some fatigue from depictions of rape on screen. The moment I realised just how toxic the toxic males in this film were, it was downhill from there. Once that veil drops, that switch goes in their eyes (and credit to the actor Aaron Glenane for portraying this so well here) that's it, we know what comes next.

It's hard watching women sexually brutalised over and over, y'know? No matter how well it's done, no matter if the story sees the survivor exact revenge. It's still a narrative choice that depresses and drains. I wouldn't have knowingly chosen a "rape film" the night I watched this, and yet there I was, again, watching one.

So... I'm sorry, I'm tired. This is going to be a quick/lazy review. Here, have a look at some of the different artwork used for this movie...

I'll admit that first image was the one I saw and that's mostly why I gave this a chance. As these images suggest, Killing Ground is a nasty, competently-told tale of really awful shit happening on a camping trip. 

It's written and directed by Damien Power and it's streaming on Netflix now.

The Babadook (2014)

It's hard to believe it's taken me two years to see this. I remember the hype and positive buzz when it came out, and ever since it's been on my infamous "list". This October challenge is a great excuse to finally sit down and watch this and others like it.

The Babadook belongs to the "are they mad or is it real?" sub-genre of horror and if it's not counted as one of the best, at the very least it's a potent strain of it; having both a child as one of the main characters and managing to tap into some very primal fears.

Amelia is a single mother and a widow. Her husband died seven years ago in a grisly car crash driving to the hospital for her to give birth, and as she admits herself, she's "not been right" since this event. She never, for example, celebrates her son Samuel's birthday on the actual day. Amelia is still tortured by her loss, barely coping, and between an infected tooth, bitchy sister, depressing job and Samuel himself - who's understandably a bit odd - her normal setting for life is "struggling".

When Samuel starts obsessing over a monster in a children's book called Mister Babadook, things really start to unravel. 

Ba ba-ba dook dook

The Babadook is scary, no doubt about it, and we have a slow, wonderful build of unfortunate events leading us to question if this creature is indeed steadily infecting the house... or is it just Amelia's grief and depression that's isolating them and evolving into something dangerous, and ugly?

The use of colour in this film is fantastic and the house where much of the action/tension takes place is almost all the same colour. Not only is it just plain weird (are your bedroom, living-room and front door all the same shade?) but it's unnerving, making the house feel flat, like the set of a stage play or (relevantly) a storybook background.

Blues, greys and shadows, everywhere.

Similarly, Amelia is seen wearing the same couple of outfits, or colour combinations of clothes throughout. This serves to remove an unnecessary distraction of wardrobe, plus adding to the feeling of characters existing on top of a backdrop. Her pastel pink and cream colour palette also highlight muck and gore very well!

Light and shadow, too, are used to brilliant effect. This relates to the primal fear I mentioned before. There's a certain deep-rooted horror of what lies in the shadows; a flicker in the corner of the eye, a coat taking the shape of a person... It's something we can all relate to - it's something that undoubtedly has always been - and when such a universal fear is used and used well, it's a glorious thing. I fully expect to have a heart-stopping moment tonight when I wake up and sleepily glance across the room.

I'd also like to give mention to the female-heavy element to this movie. It's written and directed by Jennifer Kent (her first feature length film), with predominantly female characters and a frankly perfect performance from Essie Davis as Amelia. 

She's clearly an actress with impressive range, giving us heartbreakingly meek and exhausted, to defiantly gritting her teeth, all the way up to animalistic twitching and screaming at Samuel (Noah Wiseman). I found my sympathy, surprisingly, switch from mother to son and back again, as both character arcs developed.

Frankly I've grown unaccustomed to caring about more than one character, and it definitely ups the ante, as you wonder who is going to crawl out the other end of the 90min runtime in one piece.

"I've never seen a more terrifying film than THE BABADOOK. It will scare the hell out of you as it did me." 

 - William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist.

The guy has a point. I can imagine in the intense confines of the cinema, this film would've definitely had my heart in my throat. For the full experience this needs all lights off and volume up. The hype is justified!


Edited to add:
This film has definitely stuck with me, and I intend to revisit it. Thought I would share this review, I found, which is everything I hope to be in a horror blogger and more. So good.