6 Australian horrors you should know about

To my audience out there in Australia, or just to anyone that loves the Aussie accent or foreign cinema in general, I have compiled a small list of Aussie horrors you may have overlooked.  Make sure to add these to your list of must-see films. I’ve also provided short review and trailers so you can know anything your heart desires.  All you need to know though is that I’m a horror master and I would never steer you wrong in the horror movie recommendation area. Have you seen any of these films or not? Feel free to leave feedback in the comments, I always respond!

1.Snowtown Murders

This movie was more shocking, disturbing, and intense than actually scary.  Based on a true story, Jamie is taken under the wing of his new father-figure, who ends up being a deranged killer that brainwashes the entire family.  He leads them to do acts of unspeakable violence and its a shocking transformation that the whole family goes through.  There’s lots of bloody imagery and the story will leave you with a pit in your stomach.

2. Primal

5 backpacker go on a trip; pretty self-explanatory the type of movie you’re about to get into.  However this one takes a twist and combines the vampire/creature genre with the campy/nightmare vacation genre.  The acting is good, the effects are good, the story has more twists and turns than you would expect.  This one from down under shows Aussies why they just shouldn’t leave their own country.

3. Wolf Creek

This movie is a bit of the opposite of Primal, showing backpackers why they should travel in any other part of the world besides for the outback in Australia.  Again, this is an easy film to “genre-ize”, one of those teen/ college kidnap/survival films.  However, this one is so much more.  The gore and torture inflicted by our psychotic bogan killer is really brutal and he’s an absolute ruthless fucker.  The helpless backpackers cry out in agony and you can’t help but to watch through nearly closed eyes.  The sequel makes for a great one too, and what’s even scarier is that this was based off a true story.

4. Apocalyptic

Finally a found footage film that didn’t suck and wasn’t completely filmed on an ipad/iphone. This genre is still somewhat new and untouched (a little bit). This takes the religious/ exorcism/ possession genre and mixes it together with the newly found cult genre.  I like the cult genre, as mind control and cults are a real thing that exist in the world; there are some crazy cults out there that brainwash and can make its followers do crazy things (I’m sure we all remember how the Manson family turned out).  The cult genre truly is freaky, and to an extent, the effects of found footage always get to me as well.

5. The Loved Ones

Originally, the Harry Styles lookalike is what drew me to the film.  I must profess my love for this doppelganger and how heartbroken I was to see him tortured so ruthlessly.  Again, this film can fall quite easily into a genre which may be a problem for some horror viewers as its nothing mind-fucking and truly chilling.  However, i gotta give it credit, this movie is pretty damn good.  All the characters are likable, the plot is pretty original, so I guess not really your typical prom horror, and the gore and blood is pretty full on.  This my be my favorite of the bunch.

6. The Babadook

Easily considered a modern horror classic (by others not by me), I was actually disappointed by this film, but couldn’t help putting it on the list. This got quite a lot of attention at Sundance and pretty much every person but me has had something good to say about this film.  Maybe I wasn’t in the right mood to be watching a horror whenever I chose to watch this film, but I’m not really willing to give it another go and give it a higher rating.  Hopefully many of you have seen this since this was such a big hit out on the horror market and you can beg to differ with my opinion, but I just thought most of the movie was hype and build up. However, as unconvincing and cynical as this mini review was, I would still say check out this movie and see it for yourself.

The Loved Ones

After viewing the trailer for The Loved Ones, I really thought I would be in for yet another Aussie treat.  Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed and only think I will be giving this movie 3 out of 5 stars.  If you picked up that this movie was extremely disturbing, you are correct.  Lola, the main character, not only has a severely fucked up almost incestuous relationship with her father, she suffers from some pretty heavy emotional issues which cause her to partake in the brutal torture of kidnapped prom dates.  Now, I’m not sure how many of you have been turned down when asking somebody out, but I have more times than I’m willing to acknowledge.  Lola takes rejection as an excuse to just go completely apeshit, to the point where some of the scenes in the movie border torture porn.  I, on the other hand, prefer the “handle of Smirnoff followed by copious amounts of Taco Bell” route, Lola– take notes.  Anyways Lola and her father has some type of fucked up relationship thats a bit much for me to explore, but he is the one who kidnaps the boys and brings them back to their trailer for Lola to torture and kill.  Sexy-ass Brent, as I like to refer to the other main character in the film, is just too damn sexy (or lucky/ strong/ smart would suffice) to be killed off by this sadistic body of hormones and her nutjob father.

The scene that takes place at the dinner table is amongst one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen.  It is perverted, sadistic, and just overall uncomfortable, even hard to watch at times.  Like I said, Lola is just beyond psychotic and the acting is done very well, I was legitimately creeped out.  What I DIDN’T like about this scene, was that I thought it was unnecessary.  You receive more background information on Brent rather than Lola, and I feel like this scene almost had no meaning because there is no explanation as to why Lola is the way she is.  She’s just this crazy fucking bitch that likes to have mock proms at her house and torture her kidnapped prom dates until they eventually die or are turned into, yes you guessed it, zombies.  There’s no backstory as to why she’s obsessed with prom or what type of rejection lead her to do this, it just is.  And zombies…… really? Does every abduction movie need to turn into the kidnappers force-feeding their victims some type of “zombie solvent”?  I thought that was pretty pointless and actually took away from the movie.

As always, the gore was really cool and cringeworthy, I think I actually closed my eyes for part of it, which is surprising considering I have no soul and eat torture porn for breakfast.  That was the only really awesome part of the movie.  Another really disturbing and unique part of the movie was Lola’s prom photo album.  Apparently this whole “kidnap a prom date and throw a mock prom in my dad’s trailer” has been going on since she was 6 years old, and she has the photos to prove it.  Its definitely an overwhelmingly disturbing thought to think about children under the age of 10 being subjected to the torture you see Brent go through.  That was a truly creepy part and didn’t really sit well with me.  Otherwise the lack of backstory made the movie seem kind of pointless and there was no emotional attachment I felt to the characters.  Brent was sexy as fuck, I would probably watch the movie again just so I can shamelessly check him out for an hour and a half.  Maybe if you really love the Aussie accent and you are just looking for your typical kidnap/torture film, you could tune into it.  But otherwise, I’m not going to go ahead and give my recommendation for this one, its too average and lacks any sort of complexity.

Primal

Every once in a while, a movie comes along and knocks me on my ass because it simply goes ahead and does the unexpected.  That is exactly what Primal did, and I was pleasantly surprised to see an original movie.  The zombie/cannibalism thing has always been a huge hit, especially when executed properly.  Although I only decided to give Primal 3.5 out of 5 stars, I would recommend it because it was a new spin on an old horror movie element: zombie-ism.  Seeing as this is an Australian film, and I’ve always been quite pleased with the movies I have seen from them, I already knew I was in for a treat (mainly because I had the chance to tune in to 2 hours of the sexiest accent known to man).  I would have to say, the movie starts out pretty typically.  Five friends decide to take a camping trip/ adventure tour in some seemingly abandoned and uninhabited neck of the woods. Like I said, typical.  Obviously shit starts going down, there’s a few scares here and there, but then a completely new concept is presented and the movie takes a turn for the better.  “Monstrous” bugs turn them into cannibals.  After they are exposed to the leeches, their health slowly starts deteriorating with just the right amount of blood, gore, and pain.  They are soon transformed into what seems like a half beast half human (or something — think 30 Days of Night).  Their cannibalistic tendencies terrorize the remaining few that have not been infected, and the game of cat and mouse is actually very interesting.

I’m not going to say the dialogue and plot were particularly entertaining, I mean, when I say this is a typical one of those “5 teenagers head out to the woods and get fucked up and other bloody shit” I mean it.  There was really nothing that special about the movie other than these cannibalistic “beasts”.  I liked how this movie took the whole “infected” element and made the characters transform into creatures that I’ve never really seen on film before.  Every time there’s some type of infection in a movie, the result is always zombies. Always.  But the fact that they made the infection result in the transformation into some type of neanderthal cannibal was pretty badass.  Instead of the zombies doing the slow zombie walk or whatever other approach they take to eat their victims, Primal had their infected ones act animalistic and made it look like a hunt for prey rather than zombies just nomming brains.  Like I said, its not the greatest plot, but if you’re looking for something original, bloody, cool, and badass I would say go for it.  Otherwise, if you are a sucker for a super intelligent plot or an actual meaningful movie, I would say skip it.