SNOWTOWN B
aka: The Snowtown
Murders
Australia (115
mi) 2011
d: Justin Kurzel
The ultimate in trailer trash movies, where this film lives
and breathes the depravity of the impoverished lower class, not the least of
which includes some rather crazy notions about exacting revenge for alleged
wrong-doers, specifically pedophiles, drug addicts, and gays, who are seen as
the ultimate sinners and the scourge of the earth. Bordering on the fanatical, this is a film of
raging, out of control male hormones, where similar to Todd Field’s LITTLE
CHILDREN (2006), this neighborhood watch group also has a specific
anti-pedophile agenda, but their way of handling it is decisively different,
wiping them off the face of the earth.
Based on true events, this is a graphically raw and crude depiction of
sadistically gruesome events literally pulled from the headlines, adapted by
the director and screenwriter Shaun Grant, combining Debi Marshall’s book Killing for Pleasure with Andrew
McGarry’s The Snowtown Murders, telling
the story of John Bunting (Daniel Henshall, terrific as the only experienced
actor), Australia’s most notorious serial killer who went on a 1990’s killing
spree, where a sad and cruel event leads to a supreme overreaction, where one
family’s lives are literally taken over by a raving lunatic on the loose who
prides himself in ridding the earth of its lowest scum, using supremely
horrifying methods to carry out his apocryphal Revelations. While most
filmmakers eliminate onscreen depictions of nauseatingly brutal violence, this
director unsparingly provides every graphic detail. On the other hand, while most filmmakers
attempt to provide narrative clarity, Kurzel prefers to alter the sequence of
events and intentionally leave out narrative detail, like the connecting tissue
that explains how all this comes together in the first place, or the driving
force behind these heinous acts, where by the end we barely even know who some
of these guys are. What is clear from
the opening few seconds of the film is that this first time director has a way
of providing emphasis, where the pulsating beat of the adrenal rush in the
opening sequence has a way of generating anticipation while synchronizing the
audience heartbeats. The director’s
brother, Jed Kurzel, the guitarist and vocalist for the Australian rock band
The Mess Hall, writes the jarring musical score.
Using mostly non-professionals from the northern Adelaide
suburbs, this is a seriously grim psychological horror story with torture
sequences that could send the unprepared streaming for the exits, where one can
certainly question the inclusion of such gruesome detail, especially since so
many other details are merely suggested and never spelled out, but this is not
exploitive torture porn that sensationalizes explicit gore, instead the direction
for the most part is actually restrained.
While the pervasive atmosphere is drenched in an unsettling layer of
bleak despair, the director’s approach is an accumulative build up of
meticulous detail, utilizing a relentless sense of detachment, so that when
horrors occur, they are a natural byproduct of the inhumanity already
inhabiting this mercilessly harsh world.
The squalid neighborhood seems littered by stray children with nowhere
to go, who aimlessly ride their bikes in circles, where the everpresent eyesore
of collected junk inhabiting these tiny back yards surrounded by corrugated
fences offers a claustrophobic feel of confined space. Jamie (Lucas Pittway) has that dreary-eyed
look of a bored 16-year old teenager who will never amount to much, never
setting his sights on anything, who along with his two young brothers comprise
the brood of “the boys,” raised by a single mom (Louise Harris) who always
appears harried and worn out from continually looking after them. What anyone does for income throughout the
film remains unclear, but no one is ever seen getting up in the morning and
heading for work. Nonetheless, there is
food on the table and appreciative hungry boys who politely thank their mom. All that is about to soon change, where the mom
goes ballistic on the neighbor across the street when she learns what he did to
her “boys,” taking semi-nude pictures of them and posting photos on the
Internet, which brings an odd assortment of weird and demented characters into
the home, led by the ever-smiling face of John Bunting, a charismatic,
all-embracing spirit who has a way of filling a void with boys, providing the
father figure influence they never had.
How this guy weasels his way into the family is never known,
as he arrives out of nowhere and literally takes over, never once seen spending
time with the mother, as he instead surrounds himself with a bunch of derelicts
from the neighborhood who continually mouth off against the kind of perverts
and other riff raff that they continually have to deal with, literally a
self-help course on hate and bigotry and how to set your prejudices free,
embracing all the pent-up anger and bitterness, taking the ever sullen Jamie by
his side and giving him a refresher course on how to fight back. Starting with the neighbor across the street,
but continually expanding their role, Bunting provides vigilante justice,
Australian-style, where these guys think eradicating the neighborhood of the
punks and lowlifes is doing the country a favor, where someone ought to give
them a medal. Shown largely through
Jamie’s ever listless point of view, the only emotion he’s familiar with is
indifference, but Bunting tries to instill in him a revengeful rage, showing
how he can get back at an older brother living with his father who has
continually bullied and molested him, leaving Jamie at his core an empty shell
of a human being. Bunting’s methods are
sadistically unorthodox, but to the point, the kind of strong-armed, neo-Nazi
behavior that simply shifts the power of the bully, putting the shoe on the
other foot, becoming the neighborhood enforcer, and taking an inordinate amount
of pleasure in his methods, eventually enjoying killing for killing’s
sake. This radical shift in personal
demeanor from ordinary guy to maniac serial killer is a stunning turn of events
and the centerpiece of the film, sure to catch the audience off guard, as even
though we may suspect something dark and hidden in his nature, no one would
suspect a descent into such sinister madness as this, so cold-bloodedly
calculated, as Snowtown is a town 90 miles away where in an abandoned bank
vault Bunting disposes several of the bodies in barrels of acid. The pervasive tone of the film is all about
control, how society has lost it, how Bunting attempts to reclaim it, but then
goes overboard, unable to suppress his basest instincts, becoming a human
predator where the audience begins to dread his every move. This is a shockingly different kind of horror
film, one that unleashes the enemy within, but also a film you can’t get too
close to, leaving plenty of unanswered questions, particularly Jamie’s chilling
transformation from a traumatized witness to a reluctant accomplice, but also
the director’s motives, where Kurzel clearly relishes overpowering the
audience, perhaps taking a bit too much pleasure in the gruesome detail, 2011
winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes.
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