12/27/14 (Part Five): They Call Me Mr. Babadook

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Australian films, Australian horror films, bedtime story, Best of 2014, children in peril, childrens' book, Chloe Hurn, cinema, Daniel Henshall, dysfunctional family, Essie Davies, Essie Davis, favorite films, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, foreign films, Hayley McElhinney, horror, horror films, insanity, Jennifer Kent, monsters under the bed, mother-son relationships, Movies, Noah Wiseman, psychological horror, Radek Ludczuk, Repulsion, set in Australia, single mother, stylish films, The Babadook, Tim Purcell, writer-director

If there was one film that most horror and genre critics seemed to agree on in 2014, it was Australian actor-turned-director Jennifer Kent’s fearless debut, The Babadook (2014). Kicking completely against the mainstream thirst for franchises, familiarity, sequels and found footage, Kent’s film is a fiercely original and, at times, genuinely frightening, treatise on fractured families, difficult children and the mothers who must hold them all together, even when the only reward is the promise of more pain at the end of another difficult day.

Single-mother Amelia (Essie Davis) is doing her best to raise her young son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman), although the boy’s very obvious emotional and developmental issues don’t make it a walk in the park. Amelia is still trying to get over the death of her husband (he died while driving Amelia to the hospital to deliver Samuel) and her son’s constant violent outbursts and spirited “antics” serve to both isolate her from everyone around her and constantly remind her of her beloved, dead husband. Amelia works in a rather dreary old-folks home, lives alone in her large house with her disruptive son and has only her standoffish sister, Claire (Hayley McElhinney), for occasional company, although Samuel’s behavior ensures that Claire spends as little time at Amelia’s place as possible.

In every way possible, parenthood is a full-time job for Amelia, above and beyond anything else in her life: she has to keep bringing Samuel home from school due to his propensity for taking homemade crossbows to class and, once at home, every minute of the day is devoted to Samuel’s care. In a particularly telling scene, poor, lonely Amelia can’t even get a few spare minutes to masturbate in bed before Samuel comes rampaging in, off on some hyperactive bustle of activity like a tiny, pubescent Tazmanian Devil. Amelia is constantly tired, depressed, stressed-out, overwhelmed and isolated: whenever she looks to her son for affection, she’s met with angry outbursts, violence and uncontrollable chaos. Imagine the hell of being forced to care for someone who not only doesn’t seem to appreciate your efforts but who actively fights and pushes back against you at every possible opportunity…there’s nothing enviable about that whatsoever.

As if all of this weren’t enough to send someone screaming into the abyss, however, young Samuel suddenly comes up with a heretofore unknown bedtime story called Mr. Babadook. The creepy pop-up-book seems to have appeared out of nowhere and is sort of like Clive Barker taking a stab at Dr. Seuss. Needless to say, Samuel is completely unnerved by the sinister, shadowy figure of Mr. Babadook and his mother is only too eager to hide the book and move on with life. As Samuel seems to become more and more obsessed with the book, however, things begin to happen around the house, things which the boy blames on the increasingly evil Babadook: it all reaches a head when Amelia finds glass in her soup, another bit of “mischief” attributed to the story-book villain. For Amelia, the implication seems clear, despite her son’s protests: his behavior has progressed to the point where she can no longer safely care for him.

Buffeted on all sides, Amelia begins to feel her tenuous grasp on reality slip: she begins to see hints of the Babadook everywhere, including the local police station, and there always seems to be something sinister lurking outside her field of vision in her dark, creepy house. Already pushed to the breaking point, Amelia begins to lash out violently at the one continued source of her strife: Samuel. As Amelia becomes more and more obsessed, however, the situation becomes more and more murky: is Amelia falling under the dread influence of the sinister Mr. Babadook, is she losing her mind or is there something altogether more apocalyptic going on?

Despite its surface similarity to a handful of other films, including Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) and James Wan’s Insidious (2010), The Babadook is wonderfully original, inventive and just out-of-step enough with the current mode of horror film to make it seem more refreshing than it might be in any other era. There’s an effortlessly old-fashioned quality to Kent’s film that recalls ’80s horror, such as Pumpkinhead (1988), without slavishly imitating the era. There’s nothing about this that screamed “period piece,” yet everything about the film’s style and execution pointed back to these older films.

One of the most difficult aspects of crafting a memorable horror film is always the creature/villain and Kent’s Mr. Babadook is truly interesting, creepy and fascinating. Equal parts Coffin Joe and Freddy Krueger (albeit much less loquacious), we don’t get any backstory, which ends up being a big plus: there’s a genuine sense of mystery to the proceedings, since nothing is over-explained. While I think that the film definitely takes a side on the “Is it or isn’t it real?” issue, there’s a refreshing lack of hand-holding that allows for some real emotion to shine through.

In fact, the single most impressive thing about Kent’s film, aside from its decidedly old-fashioned take on horror, is the crushing heft of the film’s emotional content. At its best, Amelia’s descent into insanity recalls Polanski’s Repulsion (1965): we’re never far from the notion of a strictly supernatural cause for the disturbances, unlike Polanski’s film, but there always a distinctly queasy unease over what is and isn’t really happening. Once the film really takes off, in the final reel, it seems a bit less open for interpretation (although there’s still a margin one way or the other) but the lead-up to that is impressively open-ended.

Much has been made of Essie Davis’ stunning performance as Amelia and, to be honest, all accolades seem fairly earned. This is the kind of raw, painful, agonized performance that would all but guarantee an actor an endless stream of awards and nominations in anything but an explicitly genre-based film. As it is, Davis’ performance will probably be one of those “best-kept-secret” deals for horror fans, something for us to gloat over whenever non-believers spout off about how facile and “silly” horror films are. The facts are quite plain and undeniable: horror and genre films are not afforded the same level of respect as other types of film and this is often to the detriment of truly great performances like Davis’.

The Babadook is precisely the kind of “prestige” horror film that deserves to be seen by as many people as possible, the kind of film that could easily break out to a much wider audience. The film looks absolutely gorgeous, for one thing: Radek Ludczuk’s cinematography is wonderfully evocative and it’s easily one of the best-looking films of the year. The production design is completely immersive, with some really awesome work being done on the creepy pop-up-book (the bit that foreshadows Amelia and the dog is insanely cool), as well as the house location. One of the biggest surprises for me regarding The Babadook is just how polished and amazing the film looks for a debut feature: it’s almost impossible for me to believe this was the product of a first-time filmmaker. I daresay that the finale, which manages to combine Time Bandits (1981), In the Mouth of Madness (1994) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), may be one of my favorites of the year, even as it manages to wrap up the film’s themes with a nice bow.

One of the great shames of the horror industry is that female voices are so under-represented: roughly 90% of horror film “victims” are female, yet you can practically count the number of female horror filmmakers on one hand. Couple this with the fact that actual female stories are so few and far between and it makes something like The Babadook seem even more special. Here we have an exquisitely well-made, genuinely scary horror film, told from a female perspective, and written and directed by a bold, new female filmmaker. This is precisely the kind of film that must be supported if folks want to see a more balanced, interesting and original kind of horror film, in the future. If nothing else, The Babadook should serve as bracing notice that Jennifer Kent is here: she’s kicked the door wide open and I, for one, can’t wait to see what she does next.

10/12/14 (Part Two): Zombies, Aliens and Meteors…Oh My!

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31 Days of Halloween, aliens, Australian films, Australian horror films, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, Daybreakers, Dead Alive, Dirk Hunter, Edgar Wright, Emma Randall, feature-film debut, Felicity Mason, film reviews, films, Gaynor Wensley, gore films, horror-comedies, infections, meteor, Michael Spierig, Movies, Mungo McKay, Peter Jackson, Peter Spierig, Rob Jenkins, sci-fi, sci-fi-horror, small town life, the Spierig Brothers, triple shotgun, twist ending, undead, writer-director, zombie, zombie film, zombies

For the most part, it’s extremely hard to surprise me with a twist in a horror film. This has nothing to do with me being some sort of super-astute audience member (although I like to think that I pay careful attention will watching) and everything to do with the fact that I’ve spent the majority of my life watching every single horror flick I could get my hands on. Trust me: if I’ve seen some of this shit once, I’ve seen it a hundred thousand times. “It was only a dream” ending? Check. Unreliable narrator? Yup. “I see dead people?” That one sounds familiar. How about that old classic “It was only a dream but now it’s about to come true?” Yawn. “We were ghosts all along?” Sounds familiar. “This desolate wasteland is actually Earth?” Move along, folks…nothing to see here. For the most part, cinematic twists are like any other aspect of pop films: if it worked once, conventional wisdom says that it will work forever, ad infinitum.

The first time that I sat down to watch the Spierig Brothers’ (Michael and Peter) feature-debut, Undead (2003), I was pretty sure that I knew what I would be getting in for. This was a modern-day zombie film, so I was pretty sure this was either going to follow the Shaun of the Dead (2004) mode (although Undead actually preceded Wright’s British rom-zom-com) or Zack Snyder’s ultra self-referential Dawn of the Dead (2004) remake (although Undead actually came before that one, too). It was an Australian film, so I was pretty sure that it would be suitably gory and/or rather insane, as Aussie genre films are wont to be. At the time, I didn’t really know much more about the film than that: it was just the newest genre film that I’d yet to see, which pretty much made it must-see for me, sight unseen.

Little did I know, of course, that Undead is anything but your average zombie film. Hell, it’s not really like your average anything, to be honest: if I had to classify the film, I’d say that it exists in a suitably daffy territory somewhere between Peter Jackson’s classic gore comedy Dead Alive (1992) and Edgar Wright’s gonzo alien-invasion comedy The World’s End (2013). It’s a zombie film, to be sure, but it’s also an alien invasion film that features deadly acid rain, a hulking, nearly silent hero with a triple-shotgun and a happy-go-lucky finale that’s like a sloppy make-out session between Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Stephen King’s Under the Dome. It’s a gore film, through and through, featuring some mighty impressive practical effects mixed in with some less than thoroughly convincing CGI but it’s also a good-natured, character-based comedy that places a premium on convincing acting and keeps the scenery chewing to a bare minimum. In short, Undead isn’t really like any one thing: it’s more like the rag-tag Voltron of out-of-control exploitation cinema, come to save the world while tearing as many people in half as possible. It is, to be honest, a complete treasure.

Since part of the unmitigated joy of watching Undead involves all of the ingenious little ways in which co-writers/directors Michael and Peter Spierig constantly screw with expectations, it behooves me to say as little about the actual plot as possible. Suffice to say that the film begins with a meteor shower, turns into a zombie apocalypse film and then proceeds to morph into something completely batshit crazy. While I’ve referenced several things that would seem to give a pretty good indication of the film’s intended direction, nothing can really prepare one for the bizarre ways in which the Spierigs decide to connect the dots. The best advise I can give with the film is to go in as blissfully unaware as possible and just surrender yourself to the insanity. Trust that the Spierigs will get you from Point A to Point Z intact (despite how insane the film becomes, it always makes perfect, if cracked, sense which is something of a minor miracle) and just get to the business of enjoying the film.

And, boy howdy, is there a lot to enjoy here. Despite the occasionally dodgy effect (the CGI sky, in particular, never looks quite right), Undead is an absolute special effects marvel, filled with one eye-popping setpiece after another. Picking favorites is kind of moot, since they’re all so good but particular standouts would definitely include the amazing convenience-store battle (the makeshift broom/circular saw weapon would make Ash weep with joy) and the bit where Marion (Mungo McKay) strides through the landscape bare-ass naked, wasting zombies just as ruthlessly as when his delicate bits were covered up. The finale is a completely gonzo joy and the seemingly never-ending zombie mayhem is handled with as much cheeky aplomb as the similar material in Jackson’s Dead Alive, pretty much the gold standard for these types of films.

In most horror/action films, you’re lucky if you get one truly great hero: Undead actually gives you two, the aforementioned absolute badass Marion and the film’s heroine, Rene (Felicity Mason). In any other film, a character like Marion would steal the film from the rest of the cast and head straight for the hills: how in the hell are you supposed to compete with a one-man zombie kill-squad who carries a triple-shotgun and comes straight out of the “Man With No Name” school of near-silent asskickery? One iconic character isn’t enough for Undead, however, since we also get Rene, a former beauty contest winner who ends up being the most no-nonsense, take charge, ass-kicking heroine since Ripley had a little problem with an uninvited interstellar guest. While McKay and Mason are both absolutely amazing performers, they’re handily supported by a better-than-average cast, including Emma Randall as an asthma inhaler-armed deputy and Dirk Hunter as a ridiculously macho gun-nut police officer who constantly attempts to assume authority without ever actually assuming it.

From a craft-point, Undead is an exceptionally well-made film. There’s a sense of whimsy to the proceedings that helps to temper the extreme violence (and Undead is extremely violent, no two ways about it), in a similar strategy to Dead Alive, and the film is full of nuance and subtlety, despite the filmmakers’ “go-for-broke” approach to the craft. The movie never feels silly, however, and proudly earns each and every one of its horror beats: this is a full-throttle horror film, first and foremost, despite the wealth of laugh-out-loud moments. And laugh-out-loud moments there are aplenty: Marion engaging in fisticuffs with a zombified fish…Rene cutting a zombie in half with a steering wheel club…Dept. Harrison assuring everyone that “people hallucinate sometimes when they panic…I know that I do,” which has to rank as the last thing you want to hear a cop say in an emergency…Marion hanging upside down from the door frame, by his spurs, and blowing away zombies left and right…as I said earlier, it’s literally one amazing setpiece after another for the better part of 90 minutes.

The Spierig Brothers would go on to make Daybreakers (2009), the Ethan Hawke-led vampire film, although that’s a solid step down from what’s on display here. Like Peter Jackson, the Spierigs are at their absolute best when indulging all of their (many) whims: larger budgets and the participation of more “respectable” agencies just seem to dilute their impact. While there’s nothing terrible wrong with Daybreakers, there’s also nothing particularly exceptional about it, either: when compared with Undead, however, the deficiencies become that much more glaring.

Like Dead Alive, Undead will absolutely not be for everyone’s tastes. It’s hard not to oversell the film’s violence and gore quotient but sensitive souls should take note: the film thrives on graphic dismemberment and bodily explosions in a way that indicates that New Zealand and Australia might be close, geographically, but they’re even closer, cinematically. The film might not revel quite as much in the over-the-top obscenity of Jackson’s classic (you won’t find any zombie wombs in this, period, much less ones large enough to stuff a protagonist into) but it never shirks on either the red stuff or clever ideas, either. And there’s actually one point on which Undead absolutely trumps Dead Alive: while Dead Alive had a rip-roaring finale that made you want to pump your fist in the air, Undead has a mind-blowingly cerebral one that really makes you think about everything that came before. Bloody, hilarious and thought-provoking? Without a doubt, Undead is the real deal: if your stomach is strong enough, give this a try and meet your new favorite film.

6/25/14: He’ll Talk Your Ear Right Off

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anti-tourism films, Australia, Australian films, Australian horror films, cinema, drinking songs, Film, film reviews, Greg McLean, head-on-a-stick, horror, horror film, horror franchises, horror movies, John Jarratt, Mick Taylor, Movies, pig hunting, Ryan Corr, sequels, serial killer, the Outback, torture porn, Wolf Creek, Wolf Creek 2, writer-director

If you think about it, writer-director Greg McLean is like a one-man “anti-tourism” board for the great nation of Australia. McLean’s first two films, Wolf Creek (2005) and Rogue (2007), seemed bound and determined to make sure that folks stay far away from the Land Down Under: after all, he’s given us an unstoppable serial killer who targets tourists and a massive, man-eating crocodile that targets tourists…by this point, McLean could probably direct a reboot of Short Circuit (1986) and have Number 5 slaughter tourists. In some ways, it’s a decidedly niche acre to plow but it’s all McLean’s and he’s done amazingly well with it. The first Wolf Creek was a nasty modern classic, a frequently revolting, tough as nails horror film that introduced the world to Mick Taylor, the grinning, sadistic purveyor of the “head-on-a-stick.” As portrayed by John Jarratt, Mick was an instantly memorable character: a crude, racist, blood-thirsty pig-hunter who wanted to keep Australia “for the Australians”: if it meant massacring every foreign tourist he came across, well, so be it. There was real power in the character of Mick, a queasy combination of tough-guy “cool” and pure, unadulterated evil: Mick was charismatic and crazy as a shit-house rat…never a good combination.

When it was announced that McLean would be returning to the character of Mick, after almost a decade, I found myself wondering how this might work out. After all, I never thought that Wolf Creek had the potential to be a franchise: it was just too gritty and mean-spirited, for one thing but the character of Mick was also problematic. As we’ve seen with Freddy, sequels can often have a way of leaching the sinister cool from a villain, turning them from pure evil into something resembling a mass-murdering Henny Youngman. As portrayed in the first film, Mick had just the proper balance of dead-eyed evil and smarmy attitude: would McLean be able to keep this balance or would Mick begin a journey that would lead him to the same land of one-liners as Freddy and the Wishmaster? In many ways, Wolf Creek 2 (2013) is a much different beast than its predecessor, more of a bleak action film than a stalk-and-slash torture porn, similar to the difference between Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986). But what about Mick? Does the Outback boogeyman still possess the ability to freeze the blood or has he joined the comedy circuit?

Wolf Creek 2 kicks off in high-fashion with a couple of corrupt highway patrolmen pulling over Mick’s truck, by way of a speed trap. The two cops are complete assholes, both belligerent and belittling to our “anti-hero” and the look on Mick’s face pretty much says it all: “Not a lot of pigs down south,” he sniffs, eyeing the high-powered rifle hanging in his truck cab, and the hog-hunter’s emphasis is pretty clear. Sure enough, as the cops take off, celebrating their “fun” with Mick, he calmly blows off the top half of the driver’s head (in a scene so astoundingly gory that it almost becomes parody), causing the car to flip. Mick calmly tracks the wounded survivor as he crawls from the wreckage, incapacitating him with a knife to his spinal cord (the aforementioned “head-on-a-stick”) before carrying him back to the car, strapping him in, soaking the whole thing in petrol and burning him alive. Mick walks off into the Outback, smiling, and we roll credits. It’s an intense, bravura, horrifying way to open the film and a pretty unforgettable way to reintroduce us to the bastard that is Mick Taylor.

The movie, proper, begins with a couple of young, energetic German tourists, Katarina (Shannon Ashlyn) and Rutger (Philippe Klaus), hitchhiking through the Outback. “Born to Be Wild” is on the soundtrack, the kids are having fun, it’s a sunny day and everything’s groovy. The pair is heading for Wolf Creek Crater which, as astute fans will remember, is ol’ Mick’s stomping grounds. As they travel, Rutger experiences some frustration with getting drivers to stop and pick them up: he complains about the loss of “community” and “altruism,” taking to task people who are afraid of foreigners and strangers. Rutger, of course, won’t know how bad the situation is until Mick stops by their campsite that evening. He’s come to tell them that there’s no camping in the national park areas and to offer them a ride back to town: Rutger is right to be suspicious, since the only things on Mick’s mind are carnage and rape, not necessarily in that order. After Rutger prevents Mick from assaulting Katarina, he gets dismembered for his troubles, allowing his companion to sneak away. “Hide and seek, eh,” Mick giggles when he discovers Katarina gone…and we’re off to the races.

From this point on, Wolf Creek 2 becomes a bit of a chase film, as Mick pursues first Katarina and then the poor, unlucky shlub, Paul (Ryan Corr), who makes the drastic (if noble) mistake of trying to help Katarina. The rest of the film entails the cat-and-mouse chase between Mick and Paul, as the terrified British tourist is chased from one end of the Outback to the other. Mick is intent on only one thing: punishing Paul for getting between him and “his meal.” Despite Paul’s best efforts, he’s not much of a match for Mick and the film swings into another mode as Mick finally catches up to Paul, becoming the torture porn film that the original was. Will Paul be able to survive the horrors that Mick intends to inflict on him? How good is Paul at Australian trivia? And what, exactly, does Mick intend to do with the electric belt sander? All these (and more) await within.

Right off the bat, as mentioned above, Wolf Creek 2 is much less a horror film than an adrenalized, gritty cat-and-mouse chase, with enough jawdropping gore and horror elements to keep a foot firmly in each camp. While I wasn’t expecting this, I must admit that it was an effective tact, for a while, at least. For a time, Ryan Coor’s Paul is actually a pretty good match for Mick, out-driving and out-maneuvering him, which lends the film a bit of the feel of a ’70s Ozploitation movie. Unfortunately, at some point, Paul turns into a whiny shit, which drastically reduces the association one can feel with him: it’s much easier to associate with an asskicker who won’t give up than it is with a crying dude blowing snot bubbles. In a way, this is odd criticism, since the first film was filled with whiny victims. Perhaps Paul’s “change of personailty” is so troubling because it takes him from hero territory, which is new to the Wolf Creek films, right back into simpering victim territory. On the whole, I would’ve liked Paul a lot more if he’d been more consistent: hard to tell if this is an issue with McLean or with actor Ryan Coor, although I’m willing to lay the blame at both their feet.

But what about Mick? As we know from the first film, these films (like most films like this) are all about the badguy: how does he stack up this time around? Unfortunately, not so well. As I feared earlier, Mick has begun to drift heavily in the direction of “wise-cracking killer,” ala Freddy, and this significantly reduces a lot of the fear around him. While John Jarratt is still a massively impressive presence as Mick, this is a decided step-down from the original portrayal. Quite frankly, Mick talks way too much: he has a one-liner for the murdered cops, quips for the German tourists, plenty of jokes for Paul…it just goes on and on. In the first film, Mick was a silent, grinning shark, an unstoppable killing machine who was so terrifying precisely because he was such an enigma: he could, literally, have formed fully sprung from the Outback, for all we knew. In Wolf Creek 2, not only is Mick one talkative fucker but he also has a clearly delineated mission: keep Australia safe from non-Australians. While this goal formed the subtext of the first film, it’s the entire context of the sequel. Time after time, Mick takes care to explain how the tourists only come there to “shit in his backyard” and have no respect for the country. He mocks the Germans national heritage and incorporates British/Australian conflicts into his impromptu trivia game, making his point all to clear. This is not to say that horror movie killers don’t need agendas (even Freddy had one) but the “anti-tourism” angle in Wolf Creek 2 just seems like a shorthand way to fill out Mick’s character. The more we know about Mick, however, the less he seems like unholy evil and the more he comes across like a racist redneck. Again, this was subtextual in the first film but McLean goes all-in on the sequel. It reminds me of the current trend (thanks, Rob Zombie) to explain, in detail, the origins of horror killers: the more we know, the less terrifying it becomes.

Despite my disappointment with the “evolution” of Mick and the mess that Paul became, how does the film actually hold up when compared to the first film? Not surprisingly, Wolf Creek 2 manages to amp up the gore and setpieces but loses out on much of the claustrophobic, hopeless atmosphere that made the first film such a horror classic. I won’t lie: there are some pretty spectacular setpieces in the film but most of them end up being more action than horror-oriented. One of the most bravura, if disturbing, scenes in the whole film is the one where Mick steals a semi-truck, turns on “In the Jungle”, and proceeds to plow through an entire herd of kangaroos, all in the pursuit of Paul. The scene is sickening, disturbing and, quite frankly, utterly amazing: it goes miles towards establishing Mick’s character without the need for pithy quips and is one of the best setpieces I’ve seen in years. Equally impressive is the trivia scene, where Mick tests Paul’s knowledge of Australian history. The scene is masterfully set-up, veering from torture porn distress to genuine comedy and back to the torture: it messes with audience expectations in a big way and provides one of the few examples of the sequel trumping the original.

Ultimately, Wolf Creek 2 is an odd film: McLean ends the movie in a way that all but guarantees a sequel, yet there’s the distinct notion that any future films will continue to expand on Mick’s new “stand-up comic” personality, which is pretty much a lose-lose situation. Perhaps, as such a fan of the first film, I went into this with unfair expectations. Truth be told, Wolf Creek 2 is an extremely well-made film, filled with some absolutely gorgeous Australian scenery and some truly gut-wrenching violence. The film is miles above most similar fare, particularly 90% of the odious torture porn subgenre, which makes it much better than many horror films out there. And yet, at the end of the day, I can’t help but feel let-down. I went into the film expecting the same unbelievably tense, gritty, nihilistic atmosphere as the first film but ended up with something distinctly more goofy, action-packed and run-of-the-mill. While I was a huge fan of McLean’s first two films, I can’t help but feel that Wolf Creek 2 is a solid step down into more generic “genre” territory. Here’s to hoping that McLean rights the ship for his next feature: I’d hate to think that the king of feel-bad cinema was about to abdicate his throne but his newest is almost the definition of “reduced expectations.” My advice? Next time, tell Mick more choppin’ and less yappin’.

5/18/14: Not Psychos…Small Business Operators

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100 Bloody Acres, Angus Sampson, Anna McGahan, Aussie films, Aussie horror, Australia, Australian films, Australian horror films, Cameron Cairnes, Chrissie Page, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, Colin Cairnes, Damon Herriman, film reviews, filmmaking siblings, films, horror, horror films, horror-comedies, human fertilizer, Jamie Kristian, John Jarratt, Movies, Oliver Ackland, Ozploitation, Wolf Creek, writer-director

Australia’s had a rich and vibrant horror/exploitation film industry since the 1970’s (if you’ve never seen a classic Ozploitation flick, you’re missing out on something quite beautifully insane), so it’s not surprising that they’ve continued this into our horror-happy present day. Over the past decade or so, however, Aussie horror films have been getting steadily more brutal, with Greg McLean’s Wolf Creek (2005) serving as somewhat of a standard-bearer. The sparse, unrelentingly grim and shockingly graphic film about an Outback psychopath who values human life as much as animal life (which is to say, not at all) has sparked a mini-wave of similar films in its wake, including Dying Breed (2008), The Horseman (2008), The Loved Ones (2009), Road Kill (2010) and McLean’s own Wolf Creek 2 (2013). This newest entry in an apparent attempt by Australian genre filmmakers to scare away tourists is the horror-comedy 100 Bloody Acres (2012), which often comes across as a kinder and gentler, if no less gore-drenched, take on McLean’s influential shocker.

Reg (Damon Harriman) and Lindsay Morgan (Angus Sampson) are not only brothers but local celebrities, of a sort, in their tiny, backwater Australian town. The two own a local “organic fertilizer” company and are so successful that they even have their own radio ad, a catchy jingle that seems to play about every five minutes (the station was probably happy for the revenue). Lindsay is the older of the two, the defacto leader and, vaguely threatening in a beefy, Amish way. Reg is kind of sweet and slow-witted, an idealistic dreamer who still sings along to their ad whenever it comes on the radio. For all intents and purposes, the Morgans are happy, thriving small business owners. Only, they aren’t.

You see, the Morgan’s fertilizer company is behind on shipping out its famed fertilizer and their customers are starting to grow impatient. Reg won’t let a bad product go out, however (they have a reputation, after all), and he’s been doing everything he can to round up the secret ingredient that makes it so special. Turns out, this secret ingredient is roadkill: more specifically, the human kind. Reg has a pretty good system (get to the accident first, scoop the bodies into his truck) that seems to work fairly well, bar the various questions that must arise when 100% of local accident victims vanish into thin air…but I digress. We’ve just seen Reg scoop up his latest find when he ends up with slightly more lively passengers: Sophie (Anna McGahan), James (Oliver Ackland) and Wes (Jamie Kristian). Their car has broken down en route to a music festival (where James intends to propose to Sophie, during John Butler’s set, not aware that best friend Wes is slipping her the salami with alarming frequency) and Sophie sweet talks a ride from the ever-skittish Reg. She rides up front, the fellas get to ride in back, with the fertilizer and hidden bodies, and they’re off to the races. When the inevitable happens in the back, Reg must take steps to prevent his and Lindsay’s illicit business practices from seeing daylight. Time to visit the factory.

Once Lindsay gets involved, the shit really hits the fan. With zero tolerance for screw-ups and a propensity for coldbloodedness that rivals Anton Chigurh, Lindsay is a true force of nature. Seeing a golden opportunity, Lindsay decides to waste not, want not with their new captives: after all, if dead bodies were well, fresh ones should work even better. The only fly in Lindsay’s ointment is an annoying tendency for the captives to escape (especially the perpetually stoned Wes) and the fact that Reg has started to fall in love with Sophie. Before long, there’s a randy local looking to knock boots with Lindsay, a dog is running around with a disembodied hand in its mouth, James is realizing that Sophie hates John Butler and the grinder is screaming into bloody life. As the Morgans are finding out, owning your own business definitely means sweating blood…and then some.

Despite its often grim subject matter, there’s a certain light-hearted feel to first time writer/directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes’ debut feature that’s quite refreshing. While I’m a huge fan of Australian cinema, in general, I’ve really enjoyed the horror renaissance of the past decade. That being said, I’ve often felt that more recent films, such as Wolf Creek and The Loved Ones, had a tendency to be so unrelentingly bleak and torturous that they functioned more as endurance tests than things to be enjoyed. 100 Bloody Acres is, first and foremost, a horror-comedy, as opposed to a slightly sardonic horror film: it’s a subtle but big difference. Whereas Wolf Creek had a tendency to brandish each bloody incident as a weapon, using the set-piece approach to horror films, 100 Bloody Acres tends to use its goriest bits as jokes, similar to how gross-out comedies like There’s Something About Mary (1998) use material that would be shocking, in a serious context, but becomes comedic when blown into absurdity. While there’s certainly nothing funny about watching a guy get part of his hand chopped off, there is something pretty amusing about watching that guy spend the rest of the film politely inquiring as to the whereabouts of said hand (remember the dog from earlier? Yep.). There’s almost endless potential inherent with Lindsay’s growing frustration with not only his idiot brother but the world in general and the Cairnes’ have managed to wring quite a bit out of the film.

With a sharp script, it falls to the cast to deliver the goods and they acquit themselves pretty nicely. Angus Sampson, who plays Tucker in the Insidious films, is the clear standout in the cast and is actually worth the price of admission all on his own. Lindsay is a fascinatingly complex character: his bursts of anger are matched with depths of serenity and calm that approach zen levels and the scenes where he manages to draw on both reserves, such as the one where he begins by congratulating Reg and ends by choking him in a headlock, are the best in the film. If Damon Harriman isn’t quite as good as Sampson, it might have more to do with a character that often seems a bit conflicted and confused: it’s a great moment when Reg finally composes himself and decides to stand up to his brother but it also doesn’t really feel earned. The three hitchhikers tend to fairly obnoxious, although Jamie Kristian has some fun with his character’s stonier moments, including a great goof where an attempt to kick a knife across the floor ends with the knife embedded in his leg. Oliver Ackland, by contrast, is a constantly whining drip, although the film does get some mileage from a running gag where his mouth is ducktaped shot and we only hear nonsense, whereas Sophie responds as if hearing an actual conversation: it’s a credit bit and Ackland’s unusually expressive face sells it. McGahan, for her part, is a rather odd presence: her character seems to be an attempt to graft a “pixie girl” onto a “final girl” and the end results don’t work. She’s usually stuck playing cloyingly cute but her (too few) moments of resolve work a bit better.

Ultimately, despite all of the positives, 100 Bloody Acres didn’t make as much of an impact on me as I’d hoped. While there are some delightfully gonzo moments, the film is usually so low-key that it seems to stall out. The script is always sharp but I didn’t always like where it was going and the final resolution seemed more than a little contrived, unlike a similar resolution for something like Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010), for example. It also seems a little strange to complain about an overabundance of gore in a horror film (especially a 2000’s-era Aussie horror film) but 100 Bloody Acres really takes the cake. It’s not spoiling anything to say that the grinding machine gets quite a workout in the film and the results are never pretty: if just thinking about the ramifications of this turns your stomach, 100 Bloody Acres is definitely not your film. The biggest issue with the gore tends to be the film’s overly conflicted tone: it begins as a horror-comedy, which balances out the excess violence quite well. When the film becomes unexpectedly serious, however, it tends to get dragged down into some pretty grimy places before being sent back into zany comedy land. Tucker and Dale, by contrast, maintained consistent levels of both grue and laughs: with 100 Bloody Acres, you’re really not sure where the needle will stop spinning.

If you’re a fan of Aussie horror films, feuding brothers and “special fertilizer,” 100 Bloody Acres may just be your ticket. If you’re just jumping on the Australian horror train, however, you might want to get on at another stop: this one might be for the fans only.