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DEAD-END DRIVE-IN AT 40: WELCOME TO THE END OF THE WORLD

28 Friday Aug 2026

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There are Australian films that attempt to explain Australia. There are Australian films that attempt to romanticise it. Then there is Dead-End Drive-In, Brian Trenchard-Smith’s magnificent, deranged vision of a country that has looked at its own future, shrugged, and decided the best thing to do is throw everyone into a drive-in, feed them cheeseburgers, give them drugs and make sure they never leave.

Forty years on, Dead-End Drive-In remains one of the strangest and most exhilarating films to emerge from the great Australian exploitation boom. Released in 1986, it is ostensibly a dystopian science-fiction thriller, but that description hardly begins to contain the thing. It is a car movie, a punk movie, a prison movie, a satire of consumer culture, a portrait of youth alienation, a social nightmare and, inevitably for a Brian Trenchard-Smith film, an excuse to launch increasingly large pieces of machinery through the air.

It is also one of those rare films that becomes more interesting the more seriously you take it.

Because beneath the outrageous costumes, the spectacular stunt work, the burnt-out cars and the general sensation that someone has spiked the national cinema with amphetamines, Dead-End Drive-In is asking an unnervingly serious question: what happens when a society decides that its unwanted people are easier to contain than to help?

The answer, according to Trenchard-Smith, is apparently to build a prison that looks exactly like a Saturday night at the movies.

THE MAN WHO NEVER KNEW HOW TO BEHAVE

To understand Dead-End Drive-In, you have to understand Brian Trenchard-Smith. Not because the film is some carefully controlled expression of auteurist intent, but because his career represents almost the exact opposite of the respectable model of Australian filmmaking. Trenchard-Smith has always seemed happiest when genre conventions are being thrown into the air and collided together at considerable velocity.

He could make martial-arts exploitation, horror, science fiction, children’s adventure, action cinema and television, often with the same gleeful disregard for the boundaries separating them. The Man from Hong Kong, Turkey Shoot, BMX Bandits and Dead-End Drive-In may appear to belong to entirely different cinematic universes, yet they share an unmistakable physicality. Trenchard-Smith likes movement. He likes spectacle. He likes bodies being thrown around spaces. He likes machinery being pushed beyond its sensible limits. Most importantly, he understands that exploitation cinema does not have to choose between being entertaining and being about something.

Dead-End Drive-In might be the clearest expression of that philosophy.

It is ridiculous, but it is not stupid. It is politically charged without ever becoming a lecture. It is visually extravagant despite its relatively modest resources. It is adolescent, lurid and occasionally uncomfortable, but beneath all that noise is a remarkably clear understanding of the social anxieties of the Australia that produced it.

Trenchard-Smith simply refuses to deliver those ideas politely.

He gives them a chainsaw.

WELCOME TO THE STAR

The premise is brutally simple. Jimmy “Crabs” Rossini and his girlfriend Carmen arrive at the Star Drive-In after suffering car trouble. They expect an evening at the movies. Instead, they discover that the drive-in has effectively become a detention centre for unemployed and socially unwanted young people.

The government does not need to execute them. It does not even need to rehabilitate them. It simply needs to remove them from the functioning parts of society and make their confinement sufficiently comfortable that they stop asking questions.

The Star provides food, entertainment, drugs and companionship. It becomes a world within a world, a brightly illuminated enclosure where the inmates are encouraged to consume themselves into submission.

This is where Dead-End Drive-In becomes considerably more sophisticated than its lurid surface suggests. The prison does not look like a prison. There are no obvious dungeon walls or endless corridors of concrete. There is a snack bar. There are cars. There is music. There are movies playing on a huge screen.

The inmates are not simply denied freedom. They are given enough distractions that freedom begins to seem unnecessary.

THE PERFECT PRISON IS ONE YOU DON’T WANT TO ESCAPE

That remains the film’s most disturbing idea.

The authorities have not created a traditional authoritarian nightmare. They have created a lifestyle. The inmates are surrounded by the very things that a consumer society tells them should make them happy. Food, television, entertainment, drugs, sex and material possessions become substitutes for employment, purpose and political agency.

The genius of the Star is that it doesn’t have to convince its inhabitants that they are free. It only has to convince them that freedom is inconvenient.

Why leave when there is food?

Why work when there is television?

Why build a future when the present is entertaining?

Why protest when you can get high?

The film’s dystopia therefore operates through distraction as much as repression. The system has discovered that the easiest way to control a population is not necessarily to terrify it, but to keep it occupied.

That makes Dead-End Drive-In feel remarkably prescient. Its junk food, consumerism and endless entertainment are not simply background details. They are the architecture of the prison.

THE DRIVE-IN AS AUSTRALIA

The choice of the drive-in is particularly inspired because the drive-in was itself such a recognisable part of Australian popular culture. It was a place associated with freedom, leisure, adolescence and the ability to temporarily escape the routines of everyday life.

Trenchard-Smith takes that cultural memory and turns it inside out.

The drive-in is no longer somewhere you visit to escape society.

It is somewhere society sends you when it has decided that you are no longer useful.

That reversal gives the film’s central location a strange melancholy. The Star feels simultaneously futuristic and nostalgic, like a discarded piece of Australian culture that has been repurposed as a holding pen for the future.

The cars remain. The screen remains. The food remains. The entertainment continues.

Only the audience has become the prisoner.

AND THEN THERE ARE THE CARS

Of course, this is Brian Trenchard-Smith, so the automobile cannot merely be symbolic.

The car in Dead-End Drive-In is a status symbol, a shelter, a weapon, an object of desire and, most importantly, an expression of mobility. Yet the film takes particular pleasure in turning that symbolism against itself. Cars are everywhere, but nobody is actually going anywhere.

The inhabitants of the Star sleep in their vehicles. They decorate them. They identify with them. They use them to establish status within the enclosed society. The automobile, traditionally one of the great symbols of freedom, has become another part of the prison.

That contradiction is everywhere in the film. The people have cars but no roads to freedom. They have entertainment but no meaningful future. They have food but no purpose. They have choices, provided those choices remain within the boundaries established for them.

The whole film can almost be understood as a gigantic metaphor for having the accelerator pressed firmly against the floor while the vehicle remains stationary.

Naturally, Trenchard-Smith eventually decides that the metaphor requires an actual vehicle to fly through the air.

THE GONZO AUSTRALIA OF BRIAN TRENCHARD-SMITH

There is something gloriously Australian about the film’s refusal to be subtle. Economic collapse becomes a wasteland of burnt-out vehicles. Youth alienation becomes a sea of punk costumes and leather. Government oppression becomes an electrified fence around a drive-in. Consumerism becomes junk food and television. Social exclusion becomes a population of young people deliberately abandoned inside a recreational complex.

The apocalypse is not presented as some distant future catastrophe.

It is the present turned up to eleven.

This is one of Trenchard-Smith’s great gifts. He understands that exploitation cinema can exaggerate reality until the exaggeration becomes a form of truth. Dead-End Drive-In does not seriously attempt to predict what Australia will look like. Instead, it takes the anxieties already present in Australian society and magnifies them until they become almost absurd.

The result is a kind of gonzo social realism.

Everything is too loud. Everything is too colourful. Everyone is slightly too grotesque. The cars are too damaged. The violence is too spectacular. The costumes are too outrageous.

And yet you can recognise the world underneath it.

That is where the satire bites.

A WORLD BUILT FROM JUNK

The Star itself looks as though civilisation has been put through a meat grinder and then handed over to a gang of teenagers with a spray can. Burnt-out cars, graffiti, concrete, rubbish, punk fashion and industrial decay transform the location into a junkyard version of the future.

The film’s production design is crucial because Trenchard-Smith does not need to build some enormous futuristic metropolis. He can find the apocalypse in the Australian landscape that already exists.

The apocalypse is a car park.

The apocalypse is a takeaway counter.

The apocalypse is an abandoned industrial space.

The apocalypse is a generation of young people who have been told that there is no future and have consequently stopped behaving as though one exists.

Most disturbingly, the apocalypse is brightly lit.

THE UNCOMFORTABLE POLITICS OF THE STAR

It would be easy to celebrate Dead-End Drive-In entirely on the basis of its aesthetic pleasures, but doing so would ignore some of the film’s more uncomfortable dimensions.

Its treatment of race, immigration and Australian identity deserves scrutiny. The film emerges from a period when anxieties surrounding immigration, economic decline and the changing nature of Australian society were deeply embedded in political and popular culture. Those anxieties find their way into the Star, where displaced populations are effectively contained and removed from the mainstream.

This is one of the reasons Dead-End Drive-In is more interesting than simply being an anarchic Ozploitation spectacle. The film does not merely show us a dystopian Australia. It shows us what that Australia is afraid of.

It is afraid of unemployment.

It is afraid of youth.

It is afraid of social disorder.

It is afraid of outsiders.

It is afraid of economic collapse.

It is afraid that the institutions supposedly responsible for maintaining order might themselves be incapable of solving the problems they have created.

Those fears do not necessarily make the film politically progressive. Some of its imagery remains troubling. But that does not make it irrelevant. Quite the opposite. The discomfort is part of what makes the film worth revisiting.

Dystopian cinema can reveal a culture’s anxieties as clearly as it reveals its aspirations.

JIMMY CRABS AND THE REFUSAL TO STAY PUT

Ned Manning’s Jimmy is therefore crucial because he refuses the bargain.

Everyone else has adapted to the Star. Jimmy hasn’t.

His rebellion is not particularly intellectual. He doesn’t deliver great political speeches. He simply refuses to accept that this is all there is.

That makes him strangely radical.

In a world where the system has convinced people to accept captivity as comfort, the simple desire to leave becomes an act of resistance.

Jimmy still believes that there is something beyond the fence.

That belief is the most dangerous thing about him.

CARMEN AND THE HORROR OF ADAPTATION

Natalie McCurry’s Carmen complicates the film’s simplistic notion of resistance. She begins to adapt to the Star, and that adaptation is both understandable and disturbing.

Because people do adapt.

They adapt to poverty. They adapt to confinement. They adapt to political instability. They adapt to bad conditions. They adapt because sometimes adaptation is the only available survival mechanism.

The Star does not need everyone to love it.

It simply needs people to stop imagining anything else.

Jimmy wants to escape.

Carmen learns how to survive inside.

Neither response is entirely comfortable.

THE MOVIES WITHIN THE MOVIE

The films being screened inside the Star provide another layer to Trenchard-Smith’s satire. The inmates watch exploitation movies while simultaneously living inside one.

Violence is entertainment.

Violence is fantasy.

Violence is spectacle.

Then violence spills beyond the screen.

The audience watches people watching movies, and those people are themselves watching images that reflect the world they inhabit. It creates an endless feedback loop between screen violence and social violence.

Trenchard-Smith’s answer to this complicated observation is, naturally, not to stop making violent movies.

He makes the violence bigger.

That is part of the joke.

Dead-End Drive-In is itself an exploitation movie critiquing a culture of exploitation.

It knows exactly what it is doing.

THE TRUCK JUMP

Eventually, all of this social commentary has to give way to the inevitable.

The truck jumps.

The climactic stunt remains one of the film’s great moments because it encapsulates Trenchard-Smith’s entire filmmaking philosophy. The film has spent all this time talking about captivity, consumerism, social control and the collapse of Australian society, and then suddenly a vehicle is flying through the air.

There is something almost philosophically perfect about that.

The truck is not merely escaping the Star.

It is escaping the limitations of the film itself.

After all the political anxiety, the satire and the symbolism, Trenchard-Smith simply says: enough.

Make it bigger.

Make it faster.

Make it fly.

That is not a failure of seriousness.

It is Trenchard-Smith’s definition of seriousness.

OZPLOITATION WITH A BRAIN

This is perhaps the mistake people make when discussing Australian exploitation cinema. They assume a film must either be trash or a masterpiece.

Dead-End Drive-In is both.

It is trashy.

It is intelligent.

It is adolescent.

It is politically loaded.

It is visually sophisticated.

It is exploitative.

It is genuinely interested in Australian society.

The contradiction is precisely what makes it work.

Trenchard-Smith understands that audiences might come for the cars, the punk costumes, the violence and the dystopian spectacle. So he gives them all of it.

Then he hides the political argument inside the popcorn.

A FILM THAT ARRIVED TOO EARLY

Perhaps Dead-End Drive-In was simply released at the wrong moment.

Australian audiences were still being encouraged to think of Australian genre cinema as something inferior to Hollywood. A film this strange, this aggressively Australian and this unwilling to behave itself was never going to fit comfortably into the mainstream.

Its initial commercial failure is therefore one of cinema’s more satisfying ironies.

The film depicts a society that has failed to recognise the value of its own discarded population.

Australian cinema subsequently spent years doing something similar to Dead-End Drive-In itself.

It was sitting there.

Covered in graffiti.

Surrounded by wrecked cars.

Waiting for someone to realise what they were looking at.

Eventually, the audience arrived.

THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN ANARCHIST

Forty years later, perhaps the best way to celebrate Dead-End Drive-In is not to pretend that it is perfect.

It isn’t.

Some of its politics are uncomfortable. Some of its ideas are more fully developed than others. Its aesthetic is unmistakably tied to the decade that produced it.

But perfection would almost miss the point.

Brian Trenchard-Smith has never been a filmmaker of polite surfaces. His cinema is physical. It is interested in impact, movement and spectacle. The machinery matters. The bodies matter. The stunt matters.

His films want you to feel the physicality of cinema.

The car hits the barrier.

The engine screams.

The body flies.

The gate electrifies.

The world collapses.

And Dead-End Drive-In might be his purest expression of that sensibility.

It is a dystopian science-fiction film, a punk film, a car movie, a prison movie, a social satire, a romance, an exploitation picture and an Australian nightmare.

And somehow, against all reason, it is also enormous fun.

THE PRICE OF ADMISSION

The title is perfect.

Dead-End Drive-In is not merely a description of the place in which Jimmy finds himself trapped. It is a description of the society surrounding him.

Everyone has arrived at the end of the road.

There is no future.

So consume.

There is no meaningful employment.

So entertain yourself.

There is no escape.

So decorate the prison.

There is no hope.

So turn the music up.

And if anyone complains, give them another cheeseburger.

That is the genius of Trenchard-Smith’s dystopia. It is not controlled by some grand totalitarian mastermind. It is maintained by administrative indifference and the quiet acceptance of everyone who has decided that resistance is too much trouble.

The system does not need to explain itself.

It simply keeps operating.

People disappear into the Star.

The movies continue playing.

The food keeps coming.

The cars keep burning.

And outside the fence, everybody else carries on.

FORTY YEARS IN THE REAR-VIEW MIRROR

Forty years later, Dead-End Drive-In feels less like a relic than a warning that has become increasingly difficult to ignore.

Its anxieties about unemployment, consumerism, youth alienation, social exclusion and institutional neglect remain remarkably potent. Its punk aesthetic has become retro. Its cars have become objects of affection. Its drive-in has disappeared.

Its future, meanwhile, has arrived in fragments.

Perhaps that is why the film has endured.

It never really predicted Australia.

It exaggerated Australia.

It took existing anxieties and turned the volume knob until the speakers exploded.

That is what Brian Trenchard-Smith does.

He does not whisper.

He does not gently suggest.

He kicks the door in, sets the car on fire, throws the television through the window and then asks whether you’ve noticed what is happening.

THE GATES ARE STILL CLOSED

There is a moment in Dead-End Drive-In when the absurdity finally becomes clear. The prison isn’t simply the electrified fence. It isn’t the guards. It isn’t the government. It isn’t even the Star.

The prison is the idea that there is nowhere else to go.

That is why Jimmy has to escape. Not simply because he wants freedom, but because he still believes freedom exists.

And perhaps that is the film’s most enduring act of rebellion.

In a genre packed with nihilism, Dead-End Drive-In still believes that someone can look at the wreckage and say no. No, I don’t want this. No, I don’t accept this. No, this isn’t the future.

I’m getting in the car.

I’m hitting the accelerator.

I’m going through the fence.

And if Brian Trenchard-Smith is directing, there will probably be a truck flying overhead when you do it.

That is Dead-End Drive-In at 40: a film about a country staring into the abyss and deciding to install a snack bar; a film about capitalism, captivity and consumption disguised as a car chase; a film about a generation being told that the future has already been cancelled.

And a filmmaker who responded to that bleak proposition with the only reasonable answer he could think of.

Make it louder.

Make it stranger.

Make it faster.

And, for God’s sake, make the truck jump.

  • Saul Muerte

SACCHARINE: The Body Is the Battleground

15 Saturday Aug 2026

Posted by in Movie review

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The body has always been one of horror’s most reliable battlegrounds. We fear what can enter it, what can escape from it and, perhaps most disturbingly, what it might become when it is no longer entirely under our control. With Saccharine, Australian filmmaker Natalie Erika James takes that anxiety and feeds it through one of contemporary culture’s most persistent obsessions: the desire to change the body into something supposedly better.

Hana is a medical student consumed by dissatisfaction with her weight and appearance. When she encounters an obscure weight-loss craze promising extraordinary results, the temptation proves impossible to resist. The secret ingredient, however, is not some miracle pharmaceutical. It is human ash. And when Hana begins consuming it, she discovers that the dead aren’t necessarily prepared to become part of somebody else’s pursuit of perfection.

What begins as a grotesque diet-culture satire gradually develops into something stranger: a ghost story, a psychological horror film and a piece of body horror that asks how much of ourselves we are prepared to destroy in the pursuit of becoming somebody else.

It is an ambitious premise, and James is an ambitious filmmaker. The result doesn’t always manage to reconcile all of its ideas, but when Saccharine sinks its teeth into its central concerns, it demonstrates exactly why James has become such an interesting voice in Australian horror.

The James Body

Viewed alongside Relic, Saccharine begins to reveal something particularly fascinating about Natalie Erika James as a filmmaker.

These are very different horror films, dealing with very different forms of suffering, yet they are connected by an increasingly recognisable preoccupation: what happens when an internal experience becomes impossible to contain inside the mind and begins to manifest upon the body.

In Relic, that experience is dementia. Edna’s cognitive deterioration becomes increasingly physical, with the house itself seeming to absorb and reproduce the decay taking place within her. Mould spreads across the walls and eventually across Edna’s body, turning the invisible horror of neurological decline into something tangible.

Saccharine takes that same principle and turns it inward.

Hana isn’t losing control of her body because disease has taken it from her. She is attempting to take control of it herself. The horror emerges from the space between those two impulses. She wants to improve herself, to become thinner, more desirable and more acceptable, but the pursuit of that ideal gradually becomes an act of self-erasure.

James has described Saccharine as exploring the thin line between self-improvement and self-erasure, and that distinction provides perhaps the most useful key to understanding her cinema.

Her characters aren’t necessarily confronted by monsters that exist independently of their emotional lives. Instead, horror gives physical form to something they are already carrying.

In Relic, grief, ageing and the terror of watching a loved one disappear become an environment that literally decays around the characters. In Saccharine, shame, hunger and the desire to alter one’s body become a presence that enters Hana from within and gradually assumes control.

The monster is therefore never entirely external.

It is an expression.

From Decay to Self-Erasure

The connection between Relic and Saccharine becomes particularly striking when we consider their attitudes towards the body.

Edna’s body is betraying her.

Hana believes her body is betraying her.

The distinction is enormous, but James approaches both characters with the same fundamental empathy. Neither woman is simply a vessel for a horror metaphor. The supernatural allows James to explore experiences that are difficult to represent literally, while the human being remains at the centre of the film.

That is why the body horror in both films feels more tragic than sensational.

In Relic, the horror lies in the inevitability of deterioration and the helplessness of those watching it happen. In Saccharine, the horror lies in the possibility that the desire to escape dissatisfaction can become another form of destruction.

One woman cannot stop her body changing.

The other cannot stop trying to change hers.

Both are trapped by an increasingly hostile relationship with the physical self.

And in both cases, James makes that psychological imprisonment literal.

The House and the Body

There is also a fascinating architectural connection between the two films.

Relic is inseparable from its house. The building becomes an extension of Edna’s deteriorating mind, with rooms, corridors and walls transforming into expressions of confusion, entrapment and decay. The physical environment becomes a manifestation of the psychological experience.

Saccharine moves that idea into the body.

Hana’s environment still matters, but the primary architecture is now physical. Her body becomes the space through which the horror operates. The film’s medical settings are particularly appropriate because they turn the human form into something that can be examined, measured, dissected and categorised.

That is precisely what Hana is doing to herself.

She has internalised the idea that her body can be treated as a problem to solve.

James simply turns that idea into horror.

The result is a continuation of the spatial thinking that made Relic so effective. In both films, characters are trapped inside environments that increasingly reflect their psychological states. The difference is that Relic makes the house feel like a body, while Saccharine makes the body feel like a haunted house.

An Australian Body-Horror Tradition

This makes Saccharine part of a particularly interesting moment in Australian horror.

Australian genre cinema has long had an appetite for the grotesque, but recent years have seen filmmakers increasingly combine physical horror with sophisticated psychological and social themes. The Babadook, Relic, Sissy and Talk to Me are very different films, but each demonstrates the capacity of Australian horror to transform intimate anxieties into something monstrous.

Saccharine comfortably belongs within that tradition.

The horror doesn’t simply arrive from outside.

It grows from something recognisably human.

Hana’s obsession with her body is not an abstract concept. It is connected to the pressures surrounding beauty, desirability, self-worth and the seemingly endless cultural demand to improve ourselves.

James simply pushes those pressures to their most grotesque conclusion.

What if the shortcut actually worked?

What if you could consume something and become thinner almost immediately?

And what if the price of that transformation was another human being?

What Are We Willing to Consume?

The film’s weight-loss substance, Gray, is one of its most inspired concepts.

Initially, it appears almost miraculous. Users lose weight at an extraordinary rate, turning the fantasy of effortless transformation into reality.

But Hana is a medical student.

She investigates.

And what she discovers is horrifying.

The substance is human ash.

At that moment, Saccharine reveals its most deliciously perverse idea. The modern miracle cure isn’t some futuristic invention. It is simply death repackaged as a consumer product.

The body that society has taught Hana to despise can apparently be transformed through the consumption of another body.

It is cannibalism disguised as wellness.

And the more Hana understands about Gray, the further she is prepared to go to continue using it.

James is at her strongest when she allows this idea to speak for itself. She doesn’t need to explain the metaphor because the metaphor is already horrifying.

We have simply taken the language of dieting and pushed it into nightmare territory.

The Dead Fight Back

The film’s second major idea arrives when Hana begins to realise that the human remains she is consuming belonged to someone.

That someone does not necessarily appreciate what has happened.

The resulting ghost story gives Saccharine another layer of unease. Hana isn’t merely haunted because she has violated some supernatural rule. She is being confronted by the humanity she has tried to reduce to an ingredient.

The ghost becomes a physical manifestation of the moral consequence of Hana’s obsession.

The dead woman is no longer simply a body.

She is a person.

That distinction becomes increasingly important.

The more Hana becomes obsessed with changing herself, the more she begins to lose sight of the humanity of other people. The haunting therefore isn’t simply punishment.

It is confrontation.

Midori Francis’ Hana

Midori Francis carries much of the film’s emotional weight.

Hana could easily have become an unpleasant protagonist. Her decisions become increasingly disturbing, and her obsession leads her into ethically appalling territory. Yet Francis gives her enough vulnerability to make those choices comprehensible without excusing them.

There is desperation beneath the vanity.

There is loneliness beneath the obsession.

And there is an almost tragic belief that if Hana can simply fix her body, the rest of her life will somehow fall into place.

Francis understands that contradiction.

Hana knows that what she is doing is wrong.

She continues anyway.

That is much more interesting than a protagonist who simply doesn’t understand the consequences of her actions.

Her intelligence becomes part of the tragedy. She has enough medical knowledge to understand exactly what is happening, but knowledge cannot overcome obsession.

The Anatomy of Horror

James’ visual confidence is particularly evident in the way she treats the human body.

The medical environment provides an appropriately clinical backdrop. Bodies are dissected, examined and categorised. Human remains become objects of scientific study.

Then the film gradually turns those same bodies into objects of desire and consumption.

The clinical becomes corporeal.

The corporeal becomes edible.

The edible becomes supernatural.

James repeatedly finds ways of making the human body appear simultaneously fascinating and disgusting. Flesh, organs and food begin to occupy the same visual territory.

This is where Saccharine demonstrates some of its greatest confidence.

Body horror doesn’t necessarily require mutilation.

Sometimes the most disturbing image is something completely ordinary presented from the wrong perspective.

A meal becomes grotesque.

A body becomes food.

Food becomes flesh.

And the distinction between nourishment and destruction begins to disappear.

The Beautiful and the Grotesque

James’ visual evolution between Relic and Saccharine is equally revealing.

Relic is dominated by oppressive darkness, Gothic architecture, mould, shadow and gradual decay. Saccharine initially appears almost to reject that visual language. Its colours are brighter, its surfaces more artificial and its imagery more tactile.

But the underlying philosophy is remarkably similar.

James has spoken about wanting Saccharine to occupy a space between “candy and grime” — the artificial sweetness of pleasure alongside the physical rot underneath it.

That tension is central to her work.

The beautiful and the grotesque are never entirely separate.

In Relic, the family home contains both memories of love and the horror of deterioration. In Saccharine, the promise of beauty and self-improvement contains the possibility of self-destruction.

James seems instinctively drawn to the point where attraction becomes repulsion.

Something is beautiful because we desire it.

Something is horrifying because we understand what that desire can cost.

That is a sophisticated foundation for body horror.

A Ghost Story Inside a Body-Horror Film

The film’s most interesting structural decision is also one of its weaknesses.

James is essentially making two horror films at once.

One is a body-horror story about eating, weight loss and the desire to transform the physical self.

The other is a supernatural ghost story about a dead woman whose body has been violated and whose presence begins to haunt the person responsible.

Individually, both ideas are compelling.

Together, they don’t always fit comfortably.

The ghost story occasionally threatens to pull the film away from its strongest material. Just as the body-horror metaphor begins to bite, the narrative shifts towards more conventional supernatural mechanics.

This doesn’t make those sequences ineffective, but they are less distinctive.

James is at her best when the supernatural and physical become indistinguishable — when we aren’t quite sure whether Hana is being haunted by a ghost, by her own guilt or by the increasingly distorted relationship she has with her body.

The more conventional the haunting becomes, the less interesting the film feels.

When the Metaphor Starts Showing

There is no great subtlety to Saccharine.

That isn’t necessarily a criticism. Horror has always been capable of taking social anxieties and turning them into grotesque literalism.

James understands that the metaphor becomes more powerful when it becomes physically impossible to ignore.

But there are moments when the film explains what its imagery has already communicated.

We understand what Hana is experiencing.

We understand why she wants to change.

We understand the destructive nature of the culture surrounding her.

The film occasionally continues explaining after the horror has already made the point.

This becomes more noticeable as the narrative progresses. The film’s second half doesn’t always maintain the intensity established by its opening sections.

The irony is that the repetition has a thematic logic.

Obsession is repetitive.

The same thought returns.

The same ritual is repeated.

The same dissatisfaction resurfaces.

But what works psychologically doesn’t always work dramatically.

The Horror of Wanting More

One of the film’s strongest ideas is that Hana never reaches a point at which enough is enough.

The first transformation isn’t sufficient.

The next one isn’t sufficient.

The goal moves.

The body changes.

The dissatisfaction remains.

This is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Saccharine because it doesn’t require a supernatural explanation.

The promise of perfection is inherently unstable.

There is always another flaw.

Another kilogram.

Another improvement.

Another version of ourselves waiting to be manufactured.

Hana’s horror comes from discovering that the thing she believes will finally make her happy has no finish line.

The body can always be changed.

The appetite can always return.

The obsession can always demand more.

The Horror of Self-Erasure

This is where Saccharine most clearly extends the ideas of Relic.

Edna’s body is being taken away from her.

Hana is voluntarily giving hers away.

The first is a horror of inevitable deterioration. The second is a horror of chosen transformation.

Yet both films ultimately arrive at a similar question:

What happens when the body ceases to feel like home?

James doesn’t provide an easy answer because neither film is really interested in easy answers.

Instead, she uses horror to make psychological experiences physical.

In Relic, decay becomes architecture.

In Saccharine, insecurity becomes consumption.

In both films, the body becomes the place where emotional and psychological damage can no longer remain invisible.

That may ultimately be the defining characteristic of James’ cinema.

She doesn’t use horror to escape reality.

She uses horror to make reality impossible to ignore.

The Australian Body-Horror Renaissance

There is something particularly encouraging about Saccharine existing within the current Australian horror landscape.

The country has always produced filmmakers willing to confront the grotesque, but there is now a remarkable confidence in Australian genre cinema’s ability to explore serious emotional and social issues through horror.

Saccharine doesn’t merely want us to recoil.

It wants the recoil to mean something.

The body becomes the battleground where social pressure, personal insecurity, desire, grief and guilt collide.

That makes James’ work part of a broader Australian horror tradition that treats genre as a means of examining the things we might otherwise find difficult to discuss directly.

And James is clearly developing a visual language of her own.

There is a confidence here that goes beyond the script’s occasional structural uncertainty.

A Film That Bites, But Doesn’t Always Chew

The frustrating thing about Saccharine is that its best ideas are genuinely excellent.

The concept of a weight-loss drug made from human ashes is inspired.

The collision of body horror and ghost story is fertile territory.

The Australian setting gives it a distinct identity.

Midori Francis is compelling.

And James has an instinct for visual horror that remains impressive.

But the film sometimes feels like it is carrying too many ideas at once.

The social commentary wants to be sharp.

The ghost story wants to be frightening.

The body horror wants to be disgusting.

The character drama wants to be emotional.

The romantic material wants to give Hana something to desire.

And the family material wants to explain where her relationship with her body originated.

Some of these elements complement one another beautifully.

Others simply compete for attention.

The result is a film that is frequently fascinating without always being completely satisfying.

The Prognosis:

Saccharine is an ambitious Australian horror film that deserves credit for taking a genuinely grotesque premise and using it to interrogate something far more familiar: our complicated relationship with our own bodies.

Natalie Erika James remains an assured visual filmmaker, and Saccharine confirms that the concerns emerging from Relic were not simply the product of a singular premise. There is a developing body of work here, one increasingly concerned with the physical manifestation of internal suffering.

Relic asked us to confront the horror of watching a body and mind deteriorate.

Saccharine asks us to confront the horror of desperately trying to prevent that body from being what it is.

One woman cannot stop herself changing.

The other cannot stop trying to change herself.

Both become trapped inside bodies that no longer feel like their own.

That continuity makes Saccharine more interesting than its individual successes and shortcomings might suggest. It establishes James as a filmmaker fascinated by the point at which psychological suffering crosses the threshold into physical horror.

The film doesn’t always achieve the devastating impact its premise promises. Its supernatural elements occasionally feel more conventional than its body-horror ideas, and its thematic commentary can sometimes become too explicit.

But there is enough ambition, imagination and outright grotesquerie here to make the film worthwhile.

James has created a horror story in which appetite becomes addiction, transformation becomes self-destruction and the dead refuse to remain reduced to ingredients.

It doesn’t always digest its ideas cleanly.

But when Saccharine sinks its teeth into its subject, it does so with considerable force.

And in an Australian horror landscape increasingly willing to make the body its canvas, that is something worth celebrating.

Relic made the house feel like a body.

Saccharine makes the body feel like a haunted house.

The next question is what James will choose to haunt.

  • Saul Muerte

Penny Lane is Dead (2026): A New Voice in the Australian Dark

09 Sunday Aug 2026

Posted by in Australian Horror, Movie review

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Australian genre cinema has never needed to look overseas for its nightmares. They have always been here: in the bush, in the suburbs, on isolated roads and beneath the seemingly endless glare of the Australian sun. From the brutal social realism of Wake in Fright through the post-apocalyptic ferocity of Mad Max, the unsettling suburban nightmares of Next of Kin and the blackly comic violence of 100 Bloody Acres, Australian filmmakers have repeatedly demonstrated an ability to turn familiar landscapes into places of profound unease.

Mia’Kate Russell’s Penny Lane Is Dead belongs comfortably within that tradition.

What makes the film particularly exciting, however, is that it doesn’t feel like an exercise in Australian genre nostalgia. Russell’s feature directorial debut has the confidence to understand the visual and thematic vocabulary of the films that came before it while still attempting to establish a voice of its own. Set during the blistering Australian summer of 1986, it takes the familiar ingredients of the holiday-house thriller—friendship, isolation, youthful recklessness, secrets and escalating violence—and turns them into something considerably darker.

The result is not without its imperfections. At times, the film’s ambition exceeds the precision of its execution, and some of its genre mechanisms are more familiar than revolutionary. But those shortcomings are considerably less interesting than what Russell gets right. Penny Lane Is Dead announces the arrival of a director with a remarkably assured understanding of atmosphere, performance and the particular unease that can emerge when Australian sunlight becomes almost as oppressive as darkness.

At the centre of it all is Kat, played by Sophia Wright Mendelsohn in a performance of extraordinary complexity.

The premise is deceptively straightforward. During a scorching summer in 1986, three best friends gather at a summer house to celebrate, only for a prank to spiral catastrophically out of control. What begins as youthful mischief rapidly becomes a fight for survival, and the familiar rhythms of friendship are replaced by suspicion, fear and bloodshed.

Yet Penny Lane Is Dead is less interested in the mechanics of the prank than in what happens when the social bonds holding these characters together begin to disintegrate.

Russell understands that the most effective horror frequently emerges from relationships rather than monsters. The threat isn’t simply something invading the house from outside. It develops within the group itself, exposing resentments and anxieties that were already present beneath the surface. The summer house consequently becomes less a refuge than a pressure chamber, with the oppressive heat amplifying every argument, every secret and every moment of uncertainty.

That Australian summer is crucial to the film’s identity.

There is an almost tactile quality to the heat. Russell understands the visual contradiction of the Australian landscape: the brightness, openness and apparent freedom of the coast can coexist with profound isolation. The relentless sunlight offers nowhere to hide, while the house becomes increasingly claustrophobic despite its connection to the vast landscape outside.

It is a distinctly Australian form of unease.

The film’s 1986 setting could easily have become an exercise in retro decoration, but Russell largely avoids allowing nostalgia to overwhelm the story. The period is present without becoming the point. Instead, the analogue world reinforces the film’s sense of isolation. These characters cannot simply reach for a smartphone and summon assistance. Information travels differently. Secrets remain secrets for longer. Physical proximity matters.

The result is a setting that feels authentically lived in rather than manufactured for aesthetic effect.

But Russell’s greatest achievement is her command of tone.

Penny Lane Is Dead moves between youthful energy, dark humour and genuine brutality without entirely settling into any one register. That instability works in the film’s favour. The characters are young, impulsive and capable of making spectacularly bad decisions, yet the consequences are never treated as weightless genre entertainment.

When the prank goes wrong, the film changes.

The laughter becomes uncomfortable.

The summer atmosphere becomes oppressive.

Friendship becomes liability.

And the question shifts from what happened to what these people are capable of doing now that survival is at stake.

That tonal transition is where Russell demonstrates the greatest promise as a filmmaker. She understands that violence is most effective when it alters the emotional temperature of a scene rather than simply providing spectacle. The blood matters because something has changed between the characters.

And then there is Kat.

Sophia Wright Mendelsohn gives the film an extraordinary centre of gravity. Kat could easily have been written as an archetype—the troubled friend, the survivor, the unpredictable one—but Mendelsohn refuses to allow her to settle into any convenient category.

Instead, Kat remains elusive.

Her motivations are not always immediately transparent. Her emotional responses can be contradictory. She can be sympathetic in one moment and deeply troubling in the next. There are flashes of vulnerability alongside moments of apparent calculation, and Mendelsohn never signals too clearly which version of Kat we are supposed to believe.

That ambiguity is enormously important.

The performance asks the audience to keep reassessing Kat rather than simply deciding whether she is “good” or “bad”. She exists somewhere in the uncomfortable territory between those definitions, where trauma, fear, loyalty and self-preservation begin to overlap.

Mendelsohn’s work is particularly impressive because so much of Kat’s complexity exists in what she doesn’t say. A look can alter the meaning of an entire exchange. A pause can suggest resentment, fear or calculation without definitively confirming any of them. She gives Kat an interiority that extends beyond what the screenplay explicitly tells us.

As the situation deteriorates, that interior world becomes increasingly difficult to read.

And that is precisely what makes her so compelling.

Kat isn’t simply someone trying to survive the horror.

She becomes part of the horror’s moral problem.

Russell and Mendelsohn understand that survival can be an ugly proposition. The genre has traditionally rewarded characters who demonstrate courage, loyalty and resourcefulness, but Penny Lane Is Dead is considerably more interested in what survival does to those qualities when the pressure becomes unbearable.

What would you sacrifice?

Who would you betray?

How much of yourself are you willing to abandon if doing so means seeing another sunrise?

Kat becomes the embodiment of those questions.

This is also where the film’s friendship dynamics become particularly effective. The three central characters aren’t simply interchangeable genre victims. Their histories and emotional connections matter, and the escalating violence forces those relationships into uncomfortable territory. The film understands that the destruction of friendship can be every bit as disturbing as physical violence.

There is a particular sadness to watching people who once knew each other intimately become strangers.

Russell captures that fracture with an increasingly grim confidence.

The film isn’t perfect. Some of its narrative turns feel familiar, and there are moments when the screenplay reaches for a psychological complexity that the plotting doesn’t entirely support. The pacing can also feel uneven as the film transitions between its more character-driven passages and its escalating genre violence.

At times, the film’s influences are visible.

But influence is not the same thing as imitation.

The important thing is that Russell demonstrates an understanding of why Australian genre cinema has historically been so effective. The landscape matters. The heat matters. Isolation matters. Humour matters. Violence matters. Most importantly, the characters matter.

There is a distinctly Australian understanding of menace at work here: the recognition that the environment doesn’t need to become unfamiliar to become threatening. The house, the summer and the friendships are all recognisable. Russell simply applies enough pressure until their familiarity becomes uncomfortable.

That is an exciting foundation for a filmmaking career.

The Prognosis:

Penny Lane Is Dead is not a flawless film, but perfection is not what makes Russell’s debut exciting. What matters is the confidence behind the camera and the sense that a filmmaker has arrived with a genuine understanding of the genre she wants to inhabit.

Mia’Kate Russell demonstrates a strong visual sensibility, an assured command of atmosphere and, most importantly, an instinct for character-driven horror. She understands that Australian genre cinema works best when its horrors emerge from recognisable places and recognisable people rather than being imposed upon them.

And Sophia Wright Mendelsohn’s Kat gives the film its beating psychological heart.

It is a beautifully complex performance, one that refuses to simplify a character who becomes increasingly difficult to understand. Mendelsohn trusts the audience to sit with uncertainty, and the film is considerably stronger for it. Kat isn’t merely someone caught inside the nightmare. She becomes the question the nightmare is asking.

For all its rough edges, Penny Lane Is Dead feels like the kind of debut that deserves attention beyond its immediate genre pleasures. It belongs to an Australian tradition of dark, uncompromising genre filmmaking while suggesting that tradition still has plenty of life left in it.

If this is where Mia’Kate Russell begins, it will be fascinating to see where she goes next.

  • Saul Muerte

Beast of War (2025) — Sharks, Sweat, and Survival at the Edge of Roache-Turner’s Cinema

15 Monday Dec 2025

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Kiah Roache-Turner has never been subtle. From the splatter-punk bravado of Wyrmwood to the steel-jawed siege mentality of Nekrotronic and Wyrmwood: Apocalypse, his films have been fueled by testosterone, gallows humour, and a gleeful refusal to apologise for excess. Beast of War doesn’t abandon that DNA—it just throws it into the open ocean and strips it back to muscle, salt, and desperation.

Set during World War II, the film strands a group of young Australian soldiers on a shrinking raft in the Timor Sea after their boat goes down. There’s no grand campaign, no strategic victory to be won—just survival. The enemy comes in familiar forms: hunger, exposure, paranoia, and the creeping inevitability of death. Then there’s the shark. Big. Hungry. Patient. Circling like a debt that always comes due.

Roache-Turner approaches the material with the same bruised knuckles and dark grin that have defined his career. This is still a male, sweat-soaked pressure cooker of a film—men snapping at one another, egos flaring, leadership eroding under the sun. But where Wyrmwood leaned into anarchic mayhem, Beast of War opts for attrition. The humour is still there, sharp and irreverent, often surfacing in moments of grim resignation rather than punchline gags. A joke muttered through cracked lips. A laugh that dies halfway out of the mouth.

Visually, the film punches well above its weight. The cinematography makes art out of scarcity: endless blue horizons that feel less like freedom and more like a prison, sun-bleached skin rendered almost raw, the raft shrinking not just physically but psychologically. The production design understands that less is more—the sea doesn’t need dressing, and the raft becomes both stage and coffin. For a low-budget production, Beast of War carries itself with remarkable confidence.

The shadow of Jaws looms large, and Roache-Turner doesn’t pretend otherwise. The shark is used sparingly, often implied rather than shown, its presence felt through ripples, shadows, and the soldiers’ growing dread. More telling is the film’s spiritual debt to Quint’s USS Indianapolis monologue—men trapped in open water, slowly realising the ocean doesn’t care about bravery or patriotism. Survival isn’t heroic. It’s ugly. It’s luck and endurance and the will to keep breathing one more minute than the bloke next to you.

Where Beast of War occasionally stumbles is in its character depth. The soldiers are broadly sketched—archetypes rather than fully formed men—and while that serves the film’s hard-boiled tone, it limits its emotional reach. When tempers flare or bodies slip beneath the water, the impact is felt more viscerally than personally. It’s effective, but not devastating.

Still, as a continuation of Roache-Turner’s career, Beast of War feels like a natural evolution. It tempers his bombast without sanding down his instincts, trading chainsaws and zombies for saltwater and teeth, while retaining the same irreverent edge. It’s a lean, muscular survival thriller that knows exactly what it is and never pretends to be more.

The Prognosis:

Beast of War isn’t about winning. It’s about lasting. About men pushed past bravado into something rawer and quieter. A gritty, blood-in-the-water chapter in Kiah Roache-Turner’s ongoing fascination with endurance, masculinity, and monsters—human and otherwise.

  • Saul Muerte

The Outback as Gothic Frontier — 50 Years of Terry Bourke’s Uneasy Australian Horror Western

12 Wednesday Nov 2025

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In the barren, wind-bitten wilds of colonial Australia, Inn of the Damned (1975) found horror in isolation. Long before “Ozploitation” became a term of critical affection, Terry Bourke’s strange hybrid of gothic horror and western aesthetics dared to imagine the Australian bush as both a landscape of myth and madness. Half ghost story, half revenge thriller, Bourke’s film sits at the uneasy intersection of imported genre traditions and a uniquely Antipodean sensibility — a cinematic haunted house in the middle of nowhere.

At its core, Inn of the Damned is a tale of vengeance and retribution, filtered through the dusty lens of the frontier. A sheriff, played with rugged stoicism by Alex Cord, investigates the mysterious disappearances surrounding an isolated guesthouse run by the elderly von Sturm couple (Dame Judith Anderson and Joseph Furst). What he finds is not merely murder, but an eerie reflection of the Australian psyche in transition — a young nation still haunted by its colonial sins and moral wilderness.

Bourke, who had already made waves with Night of Fear (1972), one of Australia’s first true horror features, was an auteur working far ahead of his industry’s infrastructure. His style was raw, experimental, and unafraid to fuse European gothic tropes with distinctly Australian themes of isolation and brutality. If Night of Fear hinted at the emerging voice of a national horror identity, Inn of the Damned pushed it into bold new territory — a bush gothic western before the subgenre truly existed.

Where Hammer Films had their fog-drenched manors, Bourke found his decay in the vast, sun-bleached plains. The titular inn, set against the encroaching wilderness, becomes both physical and psychological prison — an emblem of trauma, repression, and a colonial past that refuses to die. The film’s atmosphere, lensed beautifully by Brian Probyn, carries an uncanny stillness, where the wind whistles like a whisper from another world.

Dame Judith Anderson, returning to Australian soil after a lifetime in Hollywood and Broadway, lends the picture a tragic gravitas. Her performance as the tormented landlady is both grand and grotesque — a figure of crumbling dignity and suppressed rage. Opposite her, Joseph Furst brings a feverish menace that toes the line between villainy and pity. Bourke’s direction draws from theatrical melodrama, but reframes it through the desolation of the Outback, where civility erodes and violence becomes a natural law.

Critically, Inn of the Damned was divisive upon release. Its tonal clashes — between horror, psychological drama, and western stylization — unsettled audiences and distributors alike. Yet, with distance, the film feels pioneering rather than confused. It laid groundwork for what would become the distinct Australian horror temperament later seen in films like Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), The Last Wave (1977), and Razorback (1984). Bourke’s fascination with the land as both physical and metaphysical antagonist remains vital to understanding how the country’s genre cinema evolved.

Terry Bourke’s career never received the celebration it deserved. He was a filmmaker of contradictions — a tabloid provocateur with an artist’s ambition, a showman drawn to exploitation yet deeply attuned to atmosphere and theme. Inn of the Damned endures as his most ambitious statement, a film that reimagines the horror western not as frontier myth but as colonial nightmare.

The Prognosis:

Half a century later, Inn of the Damned stands as a curious but vital relic — a reminder that Australian horror was not born from imitation, but invention. In its madness, its rough edges, and its haunting sense of place, Bourke’s vision helped define the cinematic terror of the bush long before the term Ozploitation was coined.

  • Saul Muerte

Cut (2000) at 25: A Meta-Slasher with a Down-Under Twist

21 Friday Feb 2025

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The year 2000 was a transitional time for horror—Scream (1996) had revitalised the slasher genre with its meta approach, but by the turn of the millennium, the self-aware horror trend was starting to wear thin. Enter Cut, an Australian entry into the post-Scream wave that embraces the familiar tropes while injecting a uniquely local flavour. With a modest budget, a playful premise, and some surprising casting choices—including pop icon Kylie Minogue and ’80s teen queen Molly Ringwald—Cut is far from a forgotten classic, but it does offer a fun, schlocky ride for slasher fans willing to embrace its rough edges.

At its core, Cut plays with the idea of a cursed film. The story follows a group of eager film students who attempt to complete an abandoned horror movie, Hot Blooded, which was left unfinished after its director was brutally murdered on set. As the students begin filming, they quickly realise that the film itself might be haunted—and that the masked killer from Hot Blooded may be more than just a character. What starts as a low-budget student project soon becomes a real-life bloodbath.

It’s a fun concept, riffing on the idea of cursed productions and the dangers of meddling with unfinished works. However, Cut never quite manages to go beyond the surface of its premise, leaning into standard slasher formula rather than fully exploring the more interesting implications of a film-within-a-film.

One of Cut’s biggest draws is its unexpected cast. Kylie Minogue appears in a brief but memorable role as the original film’s ill-fated director, giving the film a dose of star power in its early moments. However, it’s Molly Ringwald who truly stands out, playing Vanessa Turnbill, an actress from Hot Blooded who reluctantly returns to the set decades later. Ringwald brings some much-needed charisma and experience to the film, leaning into the role of a washed-up star who’s equal parts bitter and self-aware.

While the supporting cast is mostly filled with lesser-known Australian actors, there’s a sense that everyone involved is having a good time, even when the script doesn’t quite rise to the occasion.

Director Kimble Rendall (who would later work on Bait 3D) keeps things moving at a brisk pace, making the most of the limited resources. The film’s kills are gory enough to satisfy slasher fans, and while the special effects sometimes show their budgetary constraints, they add to the film’s scrappy charm.

The masked killer, known as “Scarman,” is a solid if unremarkable addition to the slasher villain roster. His design—a grotesque, stitched-up face—has potential, but the film never quite gives him a distinct enough personality or mythology to elevate him above the typical masked killers of the era.

Looking back, Cut is an interesting relic of its time. It leans heavily on Scream-inspired self-awareness but lacks the sharp writing or wit that made its American counterparts so memorable. Instead, it works best when embraced as a low-budget, locally made slasher that delivers enough fun moments to warrant a late-night viewing.

It may not have the legacy of Wolf Creek or other standout Australian horror films, but for those looking for a lesser-known slasher with an early-2000s vibe, Cut offers a nostalgic, if slightly uneven, experience.

The Prognosis:

Flawed but fun, Cut is a slasher oddity that benefits from its unique Australian setting, some unexpected casting choices, and a decent dose of bloody mayhem. It won’t be remembered as an essential entry in the genre, but it’s an entertaining curiosity for those who enjoy their horror with a bit of low-budget charm.

  • Saul Muerte

Unleashing Terror: The Babadook – A Psychological Thriller Dividing Horror Fans

30 Thursday May 2024

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The Babadook stands as a chilling testament to the power of psychological horror, weaving a narrative that is as emotionally resonant as it is viscerally terrifying. Jennifer Kent’s directorial debut delves deep into themes of grief, motherhood, and the darkness that lurks within the human psyche, crafting an unsettling tale that lingers long after the credits roll.

Essie Davis delivers a powerhouse performance as Amelia, a widowed single mother struggling to cope with the loss of her husband while raising her troubled son, Samuel, portrayed with remarkable depth by Noah Wiseman. Their strained relationship serves as the emotional core of the film, anchoring the supernatural horrors that unfold within their home.

At its heart, The Babadook is a story about confronting one’s inner demons, both literal and metaphorical. The titular monster serves as a manifestation of Amelia’s grief and trauma, haunting her every waking moment and driving her to the brink of madness. Kent masterfully builds tension throughout the film, utilizing a minimalist aesthetic and atmospheric cinematography to create a sense of claustrophobia and dread.

But what truly sets The Babadook apart is its willingness to delve into the complexities of its characters, refusing to shy away from the darker aspects of motherhood and mental illness. Amelia’s descent into madness is portrayed with raw intensity, blurring the lines between reality and hallucination in a way that keeps the audience on edge until the very end.

Yet, despite its terrifying premise, The Babadook is ultimately a story of resilience and redemption. As Amelia and Samuel confront the darkness within themselves, they emerge stronger and more united than ever before, proving that even the most terrifying monsters can be overcome with courage and love.

Division Among Horror Fans:

The Babadook has proven to be a divisive film among horror fans, with its unconventional approach to the genre garnering both praise and criticism. Some viewers have lauded its psychological depth and emotional complexity, hailing it as a modern masterpiece of horror cinema. Others, however, have found fault with its slow pacing and ambiguous ending, arguing that it fails to deliver the visceral scares expected from a traditional horror film.

Yet, it is precisely this division that speaks to the film’s lasting impact and significance within the genre. By daring to subvert audience expectations and explore themes rarely addressed in mainstream horror, The Babadook challenges viewers to confront their own fears and anxieties in ways that few films dare to do.

In the end, whether you love it or loathe it, The Babadook remains a haunting and thought-provoking journey into the darkness of the human soul, solidifying its place as a cult classic in the annals of horror history.

The Prognosis:

The Babadook is a must-watch for horror aficionados seeking a truly spine-tingling experience. With its powerful performances, chilling atmosphere, and profound exploration of grief and trauma, it stands as a testament to the enduring power of the genre. Whether you’re a die-hard horror fan or simply looking for a film that will leave you sleeping with the lights on, The Babadook delivers in spades.

  • Saul Muerte

The Babadook will be streaming on Shudder from 3rd June.

PODCAST: The Babadook

50th Anniversary Retrospective: Exploring the Dark Secrets of “The Cars That Ate Paris”

26 Sunday May 2024

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An outback town with a dark secret is the setting for this Aussie New Wave classic directed by Peter Weir. A beautiful 50th-anniversary restoration presented by the National Film and Sound Archive brings this haunting tale back to life, reminding audiences of its enduring impact on Australian cinema.

After surviving a car accident, Arthur finds himself in the peculiar town of Paris, NSW. Welcomed with open arms by the local community, Arthur’s initial relief soon turns to suspicion as he uncovers the sinister truth lurking beneath the surface. Why do so many car crash victims keep arriving? And what kind of strange influence does the Mayor, portrayed by the legendary John Meillon, hold over his constituents?

With its atmosphere of mounting dread and eye-popping production design, “The Cars That Ate Paris” takes viewers on a journey into Australia’s violent car culture, leaving an indelible mark on the landscape of Australian cinema. This film marked a stunning feature debut for the great Australian filmmaker Peter Weir, who would go on to captivate audiences with masterpieces like “Picnic at Hanging Rock” (1975) and “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” (2003).

“The Cars That Ate Paris” premiered at Cannes and the Sydney Film Festival in 1974, garnering attention for its bold storytelling and unique perspective. Its exploration of societal themes and intricate character dynamics continues to resonate with audiences, even fifty years after its initial release.

Peter Weir: Director Extraordinaire

Peter Weir is an Australian BAFTA-awarded filmmaker whose impact on Australian cinema is immeasurable. A six-time Academy Award nominee, Weir’s films like “Picnic at Hanging Rock,” “The Last Wave,” and “Gallipoli” have made renowned contributions to the 1970s Australian New Wave, defining a generation of filmmakers and inspiring future storytellers.

Beyond his contributions to Australian cinema, Weir has achieved international success with a diverse range of features, including “Dead Poets Society,” “The Truman Show,” and “Witness.” His ability to craft compelling narratives and evoke powerful emotions has cemented his legacy as one of the most influential directors of his time, inspiring generations of filmmakers to push the boundaries of storytelling and explore the human experience through the lens of cinema.

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of “The Cars That Ate Paris,” we reflect not only on the enduring impact of this landmark film but also on the incredible work of Peter Weir and his invaluable contributions to the world of cinema.

  • Saul Muerte

Movie Review: Late Night With The Devil (2024)

18 Thursday Apr 2024

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Australian sibling directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes have been meticulously crafting a distinctive voice from behind the lens and with their third outing, Late Night With The Devil they have tapped into the horror zeitgeist on a global scale. Their first feature, 100 Bloody Acres was a more straight up narrative, leaning heavily into macabre humour starring Angus Sampson and Damon Herriman as struggling brothers in the meat industry who add a secret ingredient into the mix with over-the-top comical results.

Upon closer scrutiny though, it would be their second feature, Scare Campaign that is more closely aligned with the direction that LNWTD would take, with a TV show venturing into the occult investigation that goes horribly wrong. Although it missed the mark to a degree in its execution, the Cairnes brothers have learnt from this previous outing and produced a creative and decisive tale with Late Night With The Devil. 

The premise pits David Dastmalchian in his first leading role, as late night talk show Night Owls host Jack Delroy. Delroy embarks on a last ditch attempt to pull back the ratings through a marketing stunt set on Halloween 1977, and books a psychic Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), a sceptic, and a parapsychologist (Laura Gordon) who claims that her surrogate daughter Lily is possessed by the devil. 

The look and feel of this feature is so sweetly on par, it is easy to drift into the era that it is set and be lured in by the spectacle; one of the many tricks that the Cairnes team perform well. The decade of choice is no mere accident either with America rife with violence and horror that has put society on the brink of sanity, exposed to the likes Son of Sam, David Berkowitz and Charles Manson, and with the breakdown of freedom, comes the exposure to occults and satanism, leaving everyone questioning to what end can humanity be exposed to? It is this playground that the directors’ choose to play in and through the medium of television, force this evil into the homes of every suburban household.

The Cairnes also have perfected their craft in storytelling, by slowly eeking out the threat of danger in their chosen format of late night television; each guest that is introduced is a snag on the tooth of the viewer, to pull them deeper into the world they have created, until the final act is revealed with the not so sweet Lily (Ingrid Torelli). The role of the critic, Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss) is a smart storytelling device too by constantly asking the questions that audiences will naturally come up with. How much of this is real? How much is performance? And how deeply can we keep probing for the truth before we get our cat-like curiosity scorched?

The breadcrumbs that are left along the way, adds to the weight of the journey, and the torment that is exposed by the film’s conclusion. The performances are solid and none more so than Dastmalchian, who’s character Jack is the character truly under scrutiny. How much has he had to sacrifice in order to keep up with the likes of fellow late night presenter Johnny Carson? Is there more to the history behind his wife’s mysterious and fatal illness? These questions can only be dealt with through the meticulous direction and the strength in Dastmalchian’s performance; oozing charm one minute before serving a backhand of depravity the next. We’re guided on a trail of human decline where the end is nowhere to be seen with ruin at every turn.

The Prognosis:

The American Dream is served up on a plate here and scorched beyond recognition. The Cairnes Brothers capitalise on their previous efforts to expose the frailty and deprivation through a stylised lens that is fresh, inviting and delightfully disturbing. 

This is an example of an idea executed so adeptly that every creative player involved brings their A-game to the fold and delivers.

While there are some subtle flaws, the fact that they hold fast to the look, feel and strong performances, allows them to flourish and produce a solid, entertaining feature.

  • Saul Muerte

Movie Review: You’ll Never Find Me (2024)

17 Sunday Mar 2024

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Sit up and take notice Australia as another creative homegrown team have produced a dark tale worthy of your attention. Indiana Bell has once again teamed up with her directing partner Josiah Allen to develop her screenwriting skills for their first feature length outing. 

A deliciously claustrophobic story, set predominately inside a mobile home at the back of an abandoned caravan park during a gloomy and stormy night. Its sole occupant is Patrick (Brendan Rock – Carnifex, The Stranger), a strange and lonely man with hints that he may harbour a disturbing past, or is he just a man suffering from a traumatic incident that has forced him away from society?

On this one night from which the story takes place, Patrick receives an unknown visitor (Jordan Cowan – Jade of Death) at his door; the woman also displays some strange behaviour. Does she also conceal an iniquitous truth? Or is she merely the seeker of one?

From here on out will have a very simple-yet-smart narrative that pits two souls in the midst of singular location. Trust/mistrust, deception/investigation. By the time the story ends the truth will out as both delve deep into heart of it, but neither party may accept the outcome with.

The Prognosis:

This film could so easily be dismissed and with its minimal cinematic release could further bury it amongst a plethora of other features. To do so would be grossly dismissive as Indiana Bell and Josiah Allen have presented a clever and harrowing story carved out of a singular location. Smart in that it keeps the budget down, but also the manner in which they slowly deliver their tale, drags out the tension further much to the delight of the viewer. All of this is further strengthened by its two leads (Rock and Cowan) who equally showcase depth and intrigue to their respective roles. Hats off to cinematographer Maxx Corkindale who crafts his own vision from behind the lens to add another layer to the artistry on display. 

From what has been a quiet year on the horror scene so far, You’ll Never Find Me throws down the gauntlet for originality told on a low budget with a great mix of talent on show.

  • Saul Muerte

You’ll Never Find Me will be available as a Collector’s Edition on Blu-ray at Umbrella Entertainment while stocks last from May 22.