Earlier this month a bizarrely compelling new Australian film blitzed into American cinemas. Brisbane film-maker Dru Brown’s micro-budget directorial debut, The Suicide Theory (he has made one other feature but regards it as a hobby project), generated a windfall of head-turning reviews – the kind that seem to have been written by critics who’ve just picked their jaws up from the floor.
If the response to Brown’s darkly comic and shrewdly orchestrated thriller could be summarised with a single line, it would be something like: “What the hell was that?” Not necessarily in a bad way. In fact, generally speaking, in a good way.
For Variety’s Justin Chang the film, which charts the relationship between a suicidal man and an assassin he hires to kill himself, was “contrived but weirdly compelling” and “an oddball male weepie”.
Frank Scheck, from The Hollywood Reporter, saw a “seriously clever” thriller and “a black comedy of the darkest kind”. Examiner’s Debbie Elias rated it “riveting neo noir” with “more twists and turns than the region’s Nerang river and Great Dividing range”. John Hartl, from The Seattle Times, suggested “this one could belong in cult-movie heaven”.
In the spirit of dark horse indie films that seem to appear out of nowhere, chocked to the gills with ideas and styled with crowbar-to-the-face levels of verve and enthusiasm, Brown’s thriller is nothing if not a water cooler picture. It’s far too weird to garner universal acclaim (though at the time of publishing it’s sitting on a healthy 76% Rotten Tomatoes approval rating) but it’s the sort of film about which everybody will have an opinion.
Before you make plans to rush off and watch it – which you absolutely should – there’s bad news. The Suicide Theory is yet to secure distribution in Australia, let alone a release date.
Despite being one of the most striking examples of shoestring film-making the local industry has produced in recent years, The Suicide Theory was knocked back from both the Sydney Film Festival (which this year screened 256 films) and the Melbourne International Film Festival (which has 370 titles on the program).
In the US, Brown’s film is available in cinemas, on iTunes, on Amazon and even in department stores such as Walmart. In Australia it is available precisely nowhere, although the director says that is partly a result of limited time spent shopping it around.
“We have a really small team and we’ve been snowed in with everything that was needed for the US theatrical release so we haven’t had a whole lot of time to designate to talking to [Australian distributors] properly,” he says. “We’re hoping the success of the US release will help secure a good deal at home.”
The Suicide Theory is, to join the chorus of critics both perplexed and wowed by it, quite a piece of work. Percival (Leon Cain) wants to end his life but believes he’s cursed to stay alive. He pays hitman Steven (Steve Mouzakis) to do the job for him. The two meet in a musty-looking Brisbane train carriage, an early indication of the noirish look captured by cinematographer Dan Macarthur.
At first Steven rebukes his new client by telling him to do the dirty work himself. Percival, whose face and neck are horribly scarred, responds: “What is it about my face that makes you think I haven’t already tried that?”
The film is about their developing friendship, though focus remains on getting the job done one way or another. Killing Percival, however, proves no easy task. He has a habit of waking up in hospital listening to doctors tell him – in wickedly dark-humoured scenes – that he’s very lucky to be alive.
There is a veritable deluge of twists and surprise revelations, some more predictable than others. The plot is built with scalpel-like precision and wrapped up tightly. Its unashamedly contrived structure is a neat fit with Percival’s views on fate: that every encounter between himself and Steven occurs for a reason.
The fate elements are likely to be the film’s most polarising. Less contentious are the exemplary performances from Cain and Mouzakis, whose chemistry is partly what carries the film and keeps it genuine as the proceedings get very odd indeed – including a strange undercurrent of sexual energy that the two principal characters experience in very different ways.
The director captured the characters’ relationship by intentionally limiting the two actors’ off-screen interactions. “They’re both really great guys and I wanted to try and capture that friendship developing on the set in the camera,” Brown says. “It really shows in certain scenes. You can feel the clunkiness [sic] subside, and the pattern that forms when two people strike up a friendship.”
To achieve the film’s polished look, the director borrowed cameras, costumes and called in favours and the crew took their time finding the right locations. “When you have no money you have to get very creative and our team did a great job hustling,” he says, “but we don’t like using the small budget as a crutch for special treatment.”
Special treatment doesn’t appear to be something the film has received. Certainly not in Australia, where anybody who wants to see Aussie cinema’s new talk-of-the-town thriller will have to wait.
After the success of The Babadook, which found popularity and acclaim abroad but was virtually ignored at home, the scariest part of The Suicide Theory may be the story of its distribution. Particularly, the sobering thought that again the Australian film industry can produce something special – and again it was up to overseas audiences to draw attention to it.
