There could hardly be a tougher watch around than this brutal and brilliant independent film from Australia, based on the real-life case of serial killer couple David and Catherine Birnie in 1980s Perth and what became known as the “Moorhouse murders”.
Writer-director Ben Young makes his fiercely commanding feature debut with a nightmarish fictional variation on the story. A respectable-looking man and woman cruise around in their car, asking teenage girls out walking on their own if they would like a lift. The results are horrifying, and the very unwatchability of this picture, its ability to make you put your face in your hands, is ironic, considering how superbly and even beautifully photographed it is, in a flat, hard light. It is superbly acted by Emma Booth as Evelyn, a damaged and pathetic woman in an abusive relationship with psychotic John – a role in which the veteran comic actor Stephen Curry is blood-chillingly plausible. Ashleigh Cummings is excellent as Vicki, a teenage victim who fights back by trying to exploit the tensions between them.
This is a truly stomach-turning film, an ordeal horror, the specific like of which I haven’t seen for a while (maybe not since Greg McLean’s Wolf Creek in 2005) and of course it is a very tough sell. But there is no doubt how accomplished Young’s work is. I couldn’t help noticing that the film included a classic trick edit, which is perhaps a homage to The Silence of the Lambs. Not for the faint hearted.
