Ozploitation at it's finest (Primal, 2010)

There's no place like home, (ya cunts!)

I spent the last weekend horse riding in the blue mountains. The sights were absolutely amazing; Australian bush land is a stunning mix of lush ground cover and tall white gum trees which reach endlessly upwards. it is also eerie as hell, riding through it I instantly understand the concept of ancient spirits of Aboriginal dreamtime mythology.

The perfect film I can think of which displays this perfectly and exquisitely is picnic at hanging rock (1975, Peter Weir).  Watching this story of a girl’s disappearance on a sleepy day in the bushland is like watching a dream. It is beautiful and haunting piece of stunning cinematography. Picnic at hanging rock however, is not a horror film.

Often, I think of how good the Australian bush is as a horror setting; however, Australia doesn’t churn out as many (decent) ‘cabin in the bush’ themed movies as I would like. 

While films can make foreign woods look beautiful and terrifying, there’s something about having the familiar landscape to be lost in, that hits harder for me. The whole cabin in the woods trope is a favourite of mine and having been lost in the bush before, getting turned around on hikes. I really can relate to the terror of being stranded in the middle of the bush, where everything looks exactly the same; one big twisting expanse of sandstone, dry leaf litter and tall, ghostly gums. 

Decided to check out a little Aussie film from 2010, ‘Primal’ (directed by Josh Reed). 

This film is good schlocky fun and doesn’t pretend otherwise. Sometimes its refreshing to watch films which know what they are and are completely fine with it- embrace the b movie within!

6 friend’s go into the Australian bush to camp out and study some newly discovered Aboriginal rock paintings from a thousand years ago. This plan is interrupted however when, after swimming in the nearby billabong, Mel becomes a cannibalistic animal who proceeds to attack the rest of the campers and seemingly give them as offerings to a mysterious cave

This film has everything I want in a fun horror film- loads of bright red blood, gorgeous scenery, and an amusing script. Mel’s ‘Cabin fever’ like transformation is gruesome and she makes a good monster but it’s funny to see her sharp- toothed, covered in blood but running around in pink pyjamas. The action in the movie is well paced with hardly any of it dragging on, it is a well-timed movie that uses its hour and a half effectively.

As said above it is a good script with fairly believable and normal Aussie vernacular. The c-bomb is dropped with in the first scene of the film and again used effectively in a final showdown. I appreciate its use as I’m quite partial to the word.  One scene in particular I liked was the showdown between the ‘alpha males’ of the group, which ends satisfyingly and amusingly as throughout the film the two and been annoyingly fighting for title of manliest man. I thought it was great way to note on how sexism and gender expectations don’t benefit anyone, even men.

All in all this movie was great, I had such a good time watching it that is was easy to excuse some badly delivered lines and a couple scenes of shitty CGI. This is a really entertaining movie and isn’t that the point?
As a fun Ozploitation Flick, I give ‘Primal’ a 6/10.

Excuse me while I sew my uterus shut (Shelley, 2016)

If horror movies have taught me anything it is this: NEVER GET PREGNANT.

As if the actual process of successfully giving birth wasn’t terrifying and disgusting enough, it has now become a trope so successful it is now its own sub-genre.

Whilst re-watching the Alien franchise again after absolutely loving the new Alien: Covenant; I’ve realised alien (1979, Directed by Ridley Scott) is the mother of all pregnancy movies (see what I did there?). Slimy, gooey, bloody, deadly, terrifying is the whole face-hugger/chest-burster scenario; sounds like childbirth to me. The entire movie is just this huge writhing experience of sex, birth and body horror;if you don’t agree then you just have to see what this guy's blood looks like.

In light of all this swimming around in my head, I felt it was time to watch something that has been on my watch list for a while now: the Danish pregnancy horror ‘Shelley’ (2016, Denmark, directed by Ali Abbasi).

Rich hipsters Louise and Kasper who cannot fall pregnant, convince their housemaid Elena to become their surrogate in return for enough money to get her own place for her and her son.  Soon however it becomes apparent that something is not quite right; is the baby sucking the life force from Elena or is the pressure of surrogacy just causing her to have a breakdown.





I have heard others describe this film as a ‘slow burn’ like it’s a bad thing. It is not a bad thing. Slow burns are great for providing much needed tension and character development. ‘Shelley’ is at the pretty normal time of hr and a half, which is easily sat through thanks to wonderful and unique performances from its main cast, and stunning setting and cinematography. As a viewer I both appreciated the surrounding lake and forest and the seemingly idyllic farm life, while also feeling the crushing weight of isolation and vulnerability our lead character, Elena goes through.

The film is spoken mostly English which is made believable by having Elena be from Romania and English being the only way to communicate. It is also interspersed with Romanian and Danish- this works well to further show Elena’s isolation as the scenes where she is smiling nervously while others speak Danish around her are so awkward it was setting off my anxiety. So, watch this film with subtitles.*

I enjoyed this film immensely, it look the time to develop characters I cared about which in the end paid off when the film comes to a climax and which has ruined knitting needles for me forever.
All in all ‘Shelley’ was an effective psychological horror which thoroughly creeped me the fuck out. For sure I’d give it a well-deserved 8/10.

**, if you are like me and having subtitles on while people are speaking English is the equivalent of nails down a chalk board except on the inside of your brain- I suggest a neat little blocking device you can take on and off when they switch languages. If, however you are a very normal person who isn’t triggered by something so mundane- please continue normally.

As if teenagers weren’t already scary enough (Beware the slenderman, 2016)

Move over Children of The Corn; modern day juvenile killers are exponentially more terrifying.

This week, I watched the horror documentary ‘Beware the Slenderman’ (2016, Directed by Irene Taylor Brodsky). I was a little unprepared for just how bleak and horrifying the story of Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier was going to be.
In 2014, these two girls lured and stabbed another 12-year-old, afterwards claiming that they did it for your friendly neighbourhood Slenderman. The victim lived, which is the one happy note in this tragic turn of events.

Throughout the film, we learn through the girls’ families what these two girls were like as children and preteens- their age at the time of their crime was 12. These interviews are overwhelmingly sad as we watch parents struggle with the fact that their children are essentially cold blooded killers, but they also create a very tangible feeling of just hopelessness as they discuss the lack of empathy and remorse the girls, particularly Morgan, displayed in childhood. And that, while there is no one to blame, is shiver inducing. No spoiler warning needed here as from the get go the documentary explained to us the gruesome details.

scalpel-to-Achilles heel is no match for pure premeditated murder

While watching this- my mind did keep thinking back to another, though fictional, equally terrifying and hopeless film, the acclaimed ‘We Need to Talk about Kevin’ (2011, Directed by Lynne Ramsay) featuring gut wrenching performances by Tilda Swinton and John C riley. The movie is told through a series of flashbacks after a horrible event that destroys the community not to mention the family involved. From watching it is pretty easy to figure out this tragic event and the movie doesn’t hide it from you, still I won’t mention it. If you thought the little kid in ‘Pet Sematary’ was unsettling I suggest you reconsider what unsettling really is and watch ‘We Need to talk About Kevin.’

Watching these real parents of Morgan and Annisa struggle in ‘Beware The Slenderman’ reminded me of Tidla swinton’s character as she reflects how she raised her son and could only watch helplessly, sometimes frustratingly her son grow up with all the indicators of sociopath.

“But they are a child, no one can blame a child for the way they act, a child would never purposely commit heinous acts of abuse and homicide” we all cry out, and I myself lamented while watching   both these movies and yet, Kevin is a dangerous predator- and perhaps so are Morgan and Anissa (that is only for the courts to decide as they are being tried as adults this year).

Back to beware the slenderman, perhaps the most unsettling and sometimes horrifying are the police interviews of the girls right after they have committed their crime, once they were picked up walking away from the scene, with blood on their clothes still drying. Their cold and nearly robotic descriptions of how they lured, tormented and then stabbed their ‘friend’ and their descriptions of how together they had completely premeditated their actions simply makes your blood run cold as you try and comprehend their absolute lack of any remorse.

Anissa sheds a few tears which seem mainly out of the stress of being there and not coming to terms with what she’s done, she calmly explains how she didn’t want to look in her victim’s eyes so she demanded her to pretend to sleep, the first question she asks the officer is how far she walked, as if just wanting to know so she could see how fit she was. 

Morgan on the other hand does not shed a tear for the entire movie even when asking if she was going to prison “to rot and die?” She literally asks it offhandedly, like she doesn’t care either way. There are times she is blatantly lying to the officer interviewing her, calmly and rationally. It is creepy as hell.

Both the fictional Kevin and the real-life perpetrators of the Waukesha stabbings trial achieve what other killer kids on film cannot, and that is making me scared of children.

‘Beware the Slenderman’ let’s give it a solid 6/10

You know what I will throw in that I give ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’ a 10/10 (but in a way that still means I don’t think I could handle watching it again.)