Coming from the land down under us is this thrilling salt and pepper shaker ride through hell, and back, and to hell again. You’ll twitch, cheer, clench your eyes, and smile despite it all, at this beautiful spectacle of absolute horrors. It is a thrilling vision of total despair – and hope – from first time feature director Sean Byrne; proof perfect that for horror movies to be good, and approved, they need to be really good. You won’t want for anything when it’s over and when it’s on, frightening as I think it is – you won’t beg for mercy.
Set in a small lovely town where we are introduced to all character including Brent Mitchell (Xavier Samuel), who while driving his car has an accident when he tries to avoid someone walking in the middle of the road and kills his father. He spends months grieving along with his mother for the loss, and sometimes venturing out with his dingo dog to climb a rock cliff and smoke drugs to escape his pain. He contemplates not going to the school formal with his loving girlfriend Holly (Victoria Thaine) because he’s not interested in love and not because he is thinking of taking up the invitation from a quiet girl in school named Lola (Robin McLeavy) who asks Brent to the prom. It could be either the best or worst decision he has ever made.
Lola, nicknamed Princess, is going to have a dance in her pink dress one way or another and her crazy faced father Daddy (John Brumpton) is more than obliging. The psychotic couple are a B-movie ingredient in an A-movie of campy-realism that will boil your brain. Yes there’s traces of The Evil Dead, Carrie and David Lynch, but this is something greater; waxing and waning between the horrors of hell and the heart felt scenes is a break and accelerate ballet. The demented treatment by Robin McLeavy is particularly notable as well as the part expressed by Xavier Samuel with few spoken words.
An awesome soundtrack that the girls listen to contrasted with thrashing metal that energizes the brilliant cinematography by Simon Chapman (The Ground Beneath), and editing by Andy Canny (Anatomy). The pacing of the scenes is perfect as the filmmakers try to test our limits of gore and just when we can’t take any more we are back to gentle scenes with Brent’s mother, or his comic relief buddy Sac (Richard Wilson), oblivious at the dance with his goth girl date Mia (Jessica MacNamee).
It is not so much music video flickers of images and neither the challenging mix of Tarantino, but perfectly cut and scored sequential-ism. It’s genius that we are focused on a particular part of the frame and not on the entire screen, an effect that draws us in, extending the boundaries to our peripheral vision encompassing the theatre. Although it has sickening qualities, it is done with such panache it is possibly the first engaging torture session ever filmed- if I can say that. And the soundtrack alone with music composed by the talented Ollie Olsen is an unfaltering course that unites with screeching drills.
We don’t want enjoyable movies to end which makes it all the more remarkable that this one can exactly where it should. We are all just lucky to be alive, is the message. You’ll have no wounds to nurture after this big screen crowd pleaser is all over, and all the while we’re in very good hands.
