Hounds of Love

This film is really hard to watch much of the time, not only for the physical and sexual violence depicted on screen, but also the emotional abuse. It's just really unsettling, painful, brutal, tough, disturbing, and horrific.

It follows a murderous couple, John and Evelyn, who kidnap a teenaged girl, Vicki, in Perth, Australia in 1987. The things that transpire are harrowing and stomach-turning. What makes it all the more scary is the fact that this film is quite plausible. The "bad guys" look respectable: like you and me, your neighbors, teachers; they look like normal people, which makes this all the more disquieting. It all feels so real, raw, and visceral. The characters feel like real people and are multidimensional, including the villains, who so easily could've been written as one-dimensional evil people caricatures with no interiority. Evelyn is abused and damaged by John, which is why she tags along. John abuses her and kidnaps teenage girls because it makes him feel dominant. And Vicki isn't a damsel in distress; she's clever and quickly picks up on the tension and power dynamics of the captor couple and manipulates them in her attempts to escape. The dialogue feels realistic and the cinematography is very simplistic and pared-back, almost shot like a documentary, further elevating the verisimilitude; it often feels like you're a fly on the wall. Everything feels gritty.

The acting across the board is good. Emma Booth, Ashleigh Cummings, and Susie Porter are the standouts and all give really great performances. Booth as Evelyn in particular turns in a superb, impressive performance. The swath of emotions she conveys so organically is really something; she vacillates between being chilling to sympathetic to scary to pathetic to pleasant to enraged to envious.

I won't spoil anything, but the ending is really touching and edited so well. It so easily could've felt overly sentimental, but it just felt so moving, which further elevated the film overall. This is definitely worth a watch, albeit it's not for the faint of heart.

I will confess to often finding Australia to be a haunting place. I have a strange fascination with it. It's hard to explain, but I really enjoy watching Australian films, because of that.

Hounds Of Love is a well made psychological drama. It's harrowing, because of it's subject matter, but I also find it quite subtle, in the way it's handled. The central characters are all well played, but Emma Booth as tormented wife Evelyn White, I found pretty mesmerising.

It was also refreshing to see the male protagonist (Stephen Curry) portrayed as a streak-of-piss coward, as I feel many of these types of individuals are, in real life.

Class.

Oof, that was brutal. It's movies like this that make me question why I keep watching movies like this.

The story is quite simple, boiling down to a murderous couple tormenting their latest victim. As a Canadian, it brought to mind the relationship between Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo, but upon researching the film, it seems it more closely shadows the case of Australian couple David and Catherine Birnie. Which is to say that I suppose every country has a similar tale that lives in local infamy, while the world at large tries to tune out how frequently these things actually happen.

Attempting to turn this kind of tragedy into a piece of entertainment puts you on shaky ground. Even the survivor of the real life case has called out the film for needlessly drawing attention to these horrible people. The movie does go out of it's way to avoid the gore porn tag, with a lot of the violence being implied and appearing off-screen, and the tone never approaching a glorification of the situation. The filmmakers do understand the gravity of the circumstances and make you uncomfortable by design. There is a mastery in how they deliver this, and many of the scenes are chillingly effective.

The movie also justifies it's existence through it's exploration of the relationship dynamic of the killers. It poignantly portrays domestic abuse and the kind of conditioning that emotionally shackles people to situations that externally seem obviously bad. It handles this subject matter well, with a believable dynamic between leads Emma Booth and Stephen Curry.

Nevertheless, the very nature of the premise is grotesque, regardless of how much tact you approach it with. It's brutal exposition of misery is sure to leave you feeling icky, and will be of little value to all but the most calloused moviegoers.

In the same vein as the other Aussie horror movies of late, Wolf Creek and The Loved Ones, Hounds of Love is a very gritty tale of teenage abduction by a mature couple.

This is a tough watch for a lot of people and casual watchers will likely be horrified that anyone should want to commit something like this to film.

That being said, this is very well made for something on a tiny budget. The direction, editing and especially the acting by the the three main leads is excellent.

Thankfully, we don't get to see the worst bits of the violence. The director pans away or let's events occur behind closed doors whenever a particular flashpoint occurs.

I would recommend with caution. If you are against animal cruelty of any kind, this will be your worst nightmare.

Great movie about horrific stuff. There ya go. Evelyn and John cruise Perth school yards, fishing for teenage girls with friendly Aussie banter and car ride offers. The pleasantries end right there.

As the secret predator couple in the neighbourhood, Emma Booth and Stephen Curry are spectacular in their complicated performances. Charming and congenial, slick and methodical, brutal and sadistic, vulnerable and suspicious; all bases are covered. "Hounds of Love" is about serial sexual homicide, and it is as brutal as that sounds. Not in an exploitative manner (most of the cruelty is off screen), but in its believable depiction of perversion, and the matter of fact execution by the monsters.

Sporting a cheesy mustache, Curry presents a tiny, unassuming wimp - he is humiliated and berated about money owing. Yet deep inside he is a tight wound ball of explosion, and the creepy manipulator of all crimes. Evelyn is a more than wiling accomplice, but she has a wounded past, shows some semblance of sympathy, and is thus the weak link in the monster couple. How all this plays out in the most recent triangle is expertly framed by newbie filmmaker Ben Young.

"Hounds of Love" is a difficult watch, but it's also difficult to ignore.