Film Reviews

Snowtown

• Rating:
• Director: Justin Kurzel
• Starring: Daniel Henshall
• Details: Australia / 119mins (18).

If Animal Kingdom, the last Aussie movie to hit our shores, reinvented the family crime drama, Snowtown tries to its bit for the serial killer movie. Two for two, guys. Screened during the Horrorthon, where this looked drastically out of place with a number of the audience grumbling at the lack of gore on show, Snowtown isn't a horror but if a slow creeping dread is what you're after look no further.
Based on a true story, Snowtown is set in the titular area of Adelaide in the 90s, a suburb of half-finished kitchens, of stolen shopping trolleys used as toys, of limping dogs and where paedophiles seem to roam unchecked. One such child abuser is the father of 16-year-old Jamie Vlassakis (Pittaway) and when mum Elizabeth (Harris) finds out her husband has been selling pornographic pictures of Jamie and her other sons, she has him arrested… only to learn that hubby is released the next day to take up residence across the road.
Moving in to take hubby's place is the charismatic John Bunting Henshall), a kind father figure who takes Jamie under his wing to protect him from society's scum. Protect him how? By luring paedophiles, junkies and such to his home and brutally torturing them over an extended period of time before finally dumping the bodies in barrels.
Grim and gruesome Snowtown can be but the majority of the killings, which were far more terrible in reality than we see here, happen off screen, which may have disappointed the Horrorthon crowd so much; although one particular murder is dragged out so long one would hope director Justin Kurzel would just cut away.
As Bunting, Daniel Henshall turns in one of the best performances of the year. Playing a short, slightly overweight man with kind eyes, it takes some skill in turning that into an imposing, scary figure and Henshall delivers. Every time he walks into a room, there's a shudder – what is he going to do next? One scene sees him place a gun on the table in front of Jamie and quietly demands he shoot his dog – dragged out for an eternity, the scene is up there with Joe Pesci's 'What's so funny about me?' for rising dread.
The pace is a little slow and can lag at times, but for the most part there is an increasing unease to the proceedings as Kurzel squeezes every bit of tension from every scene. Different, difficult and disturbing, this is one of the most memorable movies of the year.

Review by Gavin Burke