But really, you don't get to ask viewers to sympathize with devils after you make them so damn unlikable. At first, Evelyn and John seem normal enough. Spoilers within. 5 – 1980: New Wave, Cinema City, Jackie Chan & John Woo, The History of Hong Kong Action Cinema Pt. She described getting a lift from the couple while walking home the night before; once in the car a knife was held to her, and she was imprisoned and chained in the couple’s home on Moorhouse Street. This is Horror Movie 101: the friendly couple you meet in the middle of the night is only as proportionately nasty as they are initially nice-seeming. Hounds of Love settles into unease from the first shot, a lingering, slow-pan on the bodies of cheerful suburban schoolgirls that feels explicitly like lustful leering. Though the couple had used pseudonyms in front of her, the teen had identified a real name on a medicine bottle: David Birnie. A second accomplice, Robert Wagner, was found guilty of seven murders, and a third, James Vlassakis, pleaded guilty to four (a jury failed to reach a verdict in the murder trial of a fourth man, Mark Ray Haydon, who pleaded guilty to helping the killers dispose of bodies). Hounds of Love settles into unease from the first shot, a lingering, slow-pan on the bodies of cheerful suburban schoolgirls that feels explicitly like lustful leering. Young offers a treatise on toxic love, the manipulative power dynamics twist and corrupt, and he has the courage to strip it to its ugliest truths. Like the Birnies, he preyed on hitchhikers, especially foreign tourists – two British women, and three Germans among them. But Vicki never makes it to her appointment because she's predictably drugged, and then chained to a bed. The actor plays shockingly against type. Do female murderers kill for a different reason than men? Check out more of his work on makingacinephile.com! It was selected in the Venice Days competition at the 73rd edition of the Venice Film Festival, in which Ashleigh Cummings was awarded a Fedeora Award for best actress. Greg McLean’s Wolf Creek made an international splash in 2005 with a horror story about three backpackers (including two Brits) who are hunted by a killer in the Australian outback. Justin Kurzel’s 2011 film Snowtown dramatises a series of murders that occurred around Adelaide in the 1990s. Critics have been unable to avoid comparisons with the Birnies. And, in a certain sense, the film is also uncontrollable: once this thing starts bouncing around your brain, good luck getting it out. Some relatives registered a complaint with the South Australian commissioner for victim’s rights, and a private screening was arranged in advance of the film’s premiere, but none chose to attend. Hounds of Love is Snowtown meets Natural Born Killers, with a scuzzy lounge room vibe and a foul and fetid psychological energy that clings like an unshakeable dream or a bad rash. A deadline that could come at any moment. The film-makers, for their part, strongly resist the suggestion that Hounds is a true-crime story. In this scene Young is reluctant to reveal the faces of the two sickos waiting in a nearby car. Much like what Michael Andrews did with Donnie Darko, Hounds of Love composer, Dan Luscombe, uses ’80s instruments such as pitchy synthesizers, repetitive booming base, alternative percussion rhythms in the background, and eerie background vocals. Australian cinema’s new enfant terrible (soon, inevitably, to be snapped up by Hollywood) cut his teeth on music videos, including a zombie-infused love story for the John Butler Trio. It’s not common for a film to explore both the captors and captures’ viewpoints to this extent in a torture-porn film. In post-production, McDermott adds a sepia-like hue to filter the the color palate of the film, creating a more vintage, rustic vibe. Susie Porter (also currently on Australian screens in Don’t Tell) appears in a small but memorable performance as her mother, Maggie. I decided on the latter. The hounds of love that are hunting you is imagery for love itself as something to be feared, to run away from lest it catch you and rip you up. Bogeyman … John Jarratt as Outback scourge Mick Taylor in Wolf Creek. They have also been boons to Australian cinema – bringing critical and commercial accolades to the industry, and launching the careers of their directors. Did you think it was inventive, or more of the same seen throughout the torture porn genre? Ultimately, underneath the taut exterior and dark subject matter, Hounds of Love is about the resilience of the human spirit. Before its release, there was an outcry from family members of the victims, who expressed concerns that Snowtown would be exploitative, or that it might generate empathy for the killers. In doing so, the groans and blood-curdling screams of Vicki are amplified significantly. And yet, thanks in no small part to Curry's nuanced performance, we're also supposed to see John as a man with a disconnect between his seemingly "normal" behavior and his abject deeds. The details the young woman provided were wholly convincing, from the copy of Rocky left in the VCR after the couple had made her watch it with them, and the Dire Straits cassette left in the stereo, to sleeping pills she had refused to ingest and concealed under a mattress, and pictures she had drawn and left around the house to mark her presence. Furthermore, the soundtrack choice is paramount in keeping the foreboding tone consistent, from a haunting rendition of the Christmas staple, Carol of the Bells, to the most terrifying use of Moody Blues’s Nights in White Satin to date in a film. • Hounds of Love is released in Australian cinemas on 1 June, Available for everyone, funded by readers. The problem with the film therefore isn't a matter of whether or not it's worth empathizing with the wrong kind of people. Young packs a lot of confrontational and difficult subject matter to digest over the film’s 108-minute run-time, but thankfully there is a satisfying resolution. Terrorised … Ashleigh Cummings in Hounds of Love. (Source, An indie-rock cover of this song by The Futureheads was released in 2005, and became that band's first major commercial hit, reaching #8 on the UK Singles chart and getting named Single of the Year by, The hounds of love on the album cover are Kate Bush's two dogs, Bonnie and Clyde. But Young has put a fresh and meaningful spin on a genre often preoccupied with cheap thrills. Reports from early in the film’s production, however, suggest that the Birnies in particular were very much on the film-makers’ minds. Evelyn had a life before John, a life she still longs for in many ways, but her obsessive love for him drives her to be equally complicit in his gruesome deeds. But while the Whites are evidently not your typical kill-for-no-reason degenerates, they're also frequently defined by their abject behavior. It works because Young treats it with respect, honoring the reality of the situation. When, after hours of interrogation, David Birnie led police to a series of graves in Gleneagle national park, he and Catherine proved to have abducted, raped, and killed four young women in a five-week period in 1986. Hounds of Love is a tough watch but Young’s direction is not gratuitous – given how high impact the film is, it’s surprising how much of the action takes place off-frame. Milat was given a life sentence in 1996. But Young comes at the subject matter quiety and softly, getting intimate with his monsters in a way that demands careful craftsmanship, fully realized characters, and careful restraint. Did you make it through Hounds of Love? Bush made her first foray into directing with the music video, which was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 thriller, Richard from Newport, Isle Of Wight, England, More songs with clips from movies, TV shows or speeches. If you want to read a spoiler-free review of Hounds of Love, you can read Evan’s from SXSW or Kalyn’s from The Overlook Film Festival.. Hounds of Love … At the time, many considered rap a fad that would soon pass. Kurzel went on to direct Michael Fassbender in the $125m video-game adaptation Assassin’s Creed. The last 7 songs are a conceptual suite written to be one piece of music. Suburban horror … the disused bank in Snowtown, South Australia, where police discovered eight bodies hidden in barrels. On 10 November 1986, when a 17-year-old girl arrived at a small suburban police station in Perth with a story of kidnapping and abuse at the hands of a local couple, sceptical officers passed her over to one of their most inexperienced staff members, who was also the only woman on duty. Young has a good idea here, but doesn't work hard enough to flesh out the Whites so that their pre-Vicki lives are as rich as their current actions are degrading. A vicious dog features prominently in the film’s action, as do chains, a broken window and sleeping pills. Last modified on Thu 22 Feb 2018 20.07 GMT. Stephen Curry and Emma Booth play a married pair of serial killer psychopaths in Perth, circa the late 80s, who target teenage school girls. A New York Times review said that the film “never answers a basic question: Why are we watching this?”, Heller-Nicholas emphasises that Hounds shows Young to be a promising film-maker — “I thought the first two-thirds was just a rollicking, solid thriller,” she says — but has reservations about the film’s deviations from its real-life source, especially regarding the escape attempts initiated by the Kate Moir stand-in, a character named Vicki Maloney. Eight bodies were found stored in barrels in a disused bank in Snowtown, a small community to the north of the city. It is this character development that adds a surprising emotional depth that comes to a head in Hounds of Love’s third act. Australian film curator and scholar Alexandra Heller-Nicholas – who has written extensively on violence and rape in horror and exploitation cinema – says: “It’s incomprehensible to me to look at this as anything other than a true-crime movie: the details are too close, too similar. But really, why would I want to care about characters whose backstories are so immaterial? Milat murdered seven people between 1989 and 1993, beating, stabbing, and shooting his victims and burying them in Belanglo state forest in New South Wales. 7 – 2000-Present: Life After the Handover, The History of Hong Kong Action Cinema Pt. No-one knew that one was coming and it was a complete surprise. and A Most Beautiful Thing Among Nominees at Critics' Choice Documentary Awards. Although there are disturbing scenes of abuse, the assault scenes are filmed either from a distance, out of focus, or just out of frame. Download unabridged audiobook for free or share your audio books, safe, fast and high quality! She had escaped in the morning by breaking through a window, facing off a vicious dog in her flight to help.
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