Hounds of Love

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.

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.

"Never talk to strangers. If someone ever tries to take you, fight with everything you have." ― Lisa Unger, Ink and Bone

Young writer-director Ben Young must have watched Jonathan Demme's Silence of the Lambs at least once because his Hounds of Love has earmarks of brilliant thriller/horror ultimately hinging on character and not blood. Young even introduces his film by observing that the real terror comes from what is not seen.

Much of this film, set in Perth, Australia, at Christmas time, 1987, is about the idea of a psychotic couple abducting and killing young women who happen to be stupid enough to get in the car of strangers. I say "idea" because once the girl is chained to a bed, the couple begins to reveal their psychoses, almost exclusively about the loss of children in their lives.

Although John White (Stephen Curry) does most of the physical heavy lifting as he abuses the girl, his partner, Evelyn (Emma Booth), is the tormented one and the object of abducted teen Vicki's (Ashleigh Cummings) campaign to drive a wedge between the two. The home and neighborhood is working class Perth, where similar events actually happened; the atmosphere is joyless living, not impoverished, just not nourished by the better angels of culture.

As the film moves assuredly to the climax, the characters' arcs move toward their deserved fate: Vicki shows a presence her initial bratty teen side did not evidence, John becomes more vulnerable because he is visceral rather than cerebral, and Evelyn struggles with her desire to have her children back in her life and her desire to be loved by John.

The title, Hounds of Love, ingeniously plays off the couple's dog and everyone's hunt for love, even Vicki's wounded but intrepid mother. Yes, life can have its moments of horror beyond the terrors of abuse and abduction.

Hounds of Love is meaty film from a talented filmmaker and a delight to see in a summer sure to be filled with explosions not of the mind.

I write as an escaped West Australian. We've all got something to live down.

Like Adelaide, Perth has had classic serial killers with an eerie Australian twist. Riffing on a grim 1980s case, Ben Young delivers a fine first feature, for which the Metacritic 72% is not far off the mark. The cinematography is great, capturing the endless hot sky and bleaker suburbs (read Coolbellup or Hamilton Hill) of the 1980s. Also a fine score. The three key players are excellent. The script maybe needed a little more rounding for the ending to gel properly, but I sure felt the tension.

As with Don't Tell and Berlin Syndrome, here's a rare Aussie feature that captures Australia but which I'd be proud to show overseas. Discouragingly, I wonder if the three taken together will pull much more than $1-2m.

Actually uses a real street name, no kidding. Hope it doesn't lead to disaster tourism. Meanwhile, some eagle has already spotted the curious anomaly of the 7-character number plate, never issued in Perth before the 1990s.