have you seen SNOWTOWN aka the snowtown murders aka the grim indie bleakathon that's so worth it

amazing film, was repping for it in the netflix thread but thought we could use a safe place to console ourselves after being brutalized by its magnificent awfulness

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/snowtown.jpg

The whole movie just made me feel sad and uncomfortable, not least because growing up where I did, I probably know the potential American equivalents of the people depicted. Or close to them, anyway.

yeah this movie is not a good times party but its really reallllly good.

i think its better than Henry: POASK, but i imagine thats controversial and all. def treads the same ground, but does it with a hard to describe subtlety.

also that one scene (you know the one) is one of the most difficult to watch things ive seen in a long time

OK so I just watched this last night. By myself. The geographical/cultural divide provided no distance at all for me, really. This could have been North Central Florida, the olympic peninsula WA, South Dakota, any number of fucked places I have been in the US.

As I said on the netflix thread, the expression of spellbound wonder on John's face as he watches the older brother repeatedly almost die is something that is gonna haunt me for a long long time. That actor was incredible. The smiling eyes, the persistent prodding little 'yeah?' and 'aye?'s

ha xpost

Didn't care that much for it tbh

it puts you in a world that's so specific and well-defined that it's almost tactile, but it never seems alien. get rid of the aussie accents and kangaroo abuse and it could've been set in the US, its horribleness is universal. there's so many aussies on the board, would be interesting to hear their take on it.

xp to phil and lol jon just said the same thing

I have never seen Henry. Have always been too scared of it. TBH had I known everything abt Snowtown I would not have watched it; would have concluded it would be too much for me.

oh yeah, I know ppl who can bear any kind of horrible human suffering on screen but absolutely cannot deal with animals being hurt-- WARNING to those folks, there are animals hella hurt in this joint. Not ACTUALLY hurt but... you probably should not watch.

what i said on rolling horror, that still sums up the movie best for me:

Snowtown/alt title The Snowtown Murders - well if you are craving a soul-destroying bleak horror skincrawler ala Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer this is one for you. its fairly brilliant, and incredibly well-acted, and deeply in the camp of "movies that are so hard to watch that i dont really recommend them". its a rough one, and gets worse when you find out that it is a true story.

for ex, I know my wife would be utterly destroyed by the kangaroo scene.

xpost to self

So I kind of wanna read the book of the same title now?

It does a really good job in depicting John as . . . just this guy. He's not some super-smart, super-seductive movie serial killer. He's just an average guy who is very good at couching what he does as "taking care of our own" and "doing what needs to be done" and sort of arguing people into a corner until they find themselves already doing it.

totally mismarketed in the US imo, apparently you can't release a movie about a serial killer here without it being a horror film or crime thriller. horror fans will "enjoy" this but it really deserves a broader audience (an audience with a strong stomach, granted).

sorry if I encouraged you to traumatize yourself jon! guess it's worth mentioning that the child abuse angle may bother some folks, too. at the same time I don't think the movie is exploitative at all, it deals in some heavy shit with absolute observational lucidity.

He's not super-seductive but he has a certain twinkling lust-for-life/death that I feel like I have personally encountered before in my younger days of being around unacceptable psychos.

xpost don't worry Edward! I'm glad I watched it. Maybe I CAN handle Henry...?

Ugh I just remembered the dog scene in the kitchen. Shows what a good director can do entirely with sound and framing.

xp yeah, he's very charming. Not like "Hannibal Lecter" charming, but charming in the way that somewhat good-times dudes who seem like they're fun to hang out with are.

my already high estimation of snowtown was increased after I found out there were only two professional actors in the entire cast, and if I had to guess who they were I would've gotten one wrong. some incredible performances by regular folks cast from the area where it happened.

i think the most chilling thing is the ability he has to basically snap from good time charlie to dead eyed brutalizer, which once you spend enough time working in dive bars seems so creepily familiar.

Something crazy i forgot to mention; when i watched this last night I had just finished the pedophile article in the latest new yorker and was kind of reeling from that, and thought, well let's drown that out with a different brand of trauma, shall we? Annnnd what's the first plot point in Snowtown (which turns out to not be the crux at all...)

was 'John' one of the pro actors?

yeah, he was. the other one is tough to spot tho.

having the charismatic psycho being played by a pro actor among amateurs is kind of a brilliant move

i assumed that the trans dude was a pro actor, but maybe not?

ooh you're good

I would've guessed the other lead was the aussie equivalent of jesse eisenberg but no, just a dude from the 'hood

here are a couple of good interviews with the director, justin kurzel. currently working on a le carre adaption scripted by the guy who wrote the screenplay for drive.

http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/03/interview-the-snowtown-murders-director-justin-kurzel

http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/an-interview-with-snowtown-director-justin-kurzel/

Their characterization of country town/ semi-urban australia is spot on. It reminded me a lot of where I grew up.

this was really good. i didn't actually find it that tough to watch until the bathroom scene. but maybe i'm jaded. i put off watching it cuz i was afraid it would be more of a torture-fest not knowing the story. kinda wish i had known a little bit more of john's backstory. did he live in that neighborhood forever? what about his equally sadistic friend? what was his story? heath ledger kid was really good. sorta catatonic in the exact way you would expect him to be. almost reminded me of that guy who directed george washington visually. that malick kinda thing.

as far as that side of the world goes kinda gave me the same kick in the gut that Once Were Warriors gave me long ago. i wept like crazy watching once were warriors though. this movie just kinda stuns/numbs you.

seems there are a few books on this affair. Killing for Pleasure, The Snowtown Murders and The Bodies in Barrels Murders. Wondering which one to go with.

Whoa I never looked before but I can't believe how much those two actors look like the real guys.

http://www.smh.com.au/ffxImage/urlpicture_id_1062902003594_2003/09/09/0909nat_buntingwagner.jpg

I've been wanting to see this for a long time, I really really need to see it

The words "dog scene," given the context, make me extremely wary of this.

It's on NF streaming if that hasn't been mentioned yet itt.

VG as a native strain speaker you'll be chagrined to know I had to watch with subtitles on. u_u

One of the things I liked about the film is that it explained the motivation of John Bunting & the people around him as clearly as possible. He was almost treated with sympathy. I think that's quite rare in films with this sort of subject matter.

xxxpost phil

RAGH BLOODY SEPPOS FARKEN GIRLS BLOUSES

no, it doesn't surprise me anymore. I hear that a lot

sympathy's a bit strong, but there is a very clinical approach at work. not in a cold cronenbergian sense... more like a total dedication to verisimilitude.

xp

I kinda want to watch this, but I'm a little bit worried. You guys know I can handle some terrible stuff, and I don't feel partic fragile atm, but can someone give me some keywords for why this is so bleak and terrifying? "Dog scene" is making me think this is not for me.

I knew almost nothing about the case or the film when I watched it, and an interesting byproduct was not knowing who the killer was. the film had me guessing wrongly for a while, and when he did show up he seemed like such a friendly nice guy, I was like it's gonna suck when the killer gets to him.

LL, something bad happens to a dog but it happens just out of the frame. You hear fucked up accurate-sounding sound effects.

However, you do see with NOTHING left to the imagination an already-dead kangaroo being chopped up in a back yard.

LL, I'd compare it to clarke's bully minus the paedo prurience. an hour goes by before there's any graphic violence but by then you're already stultified by the characters' depressing dead end lives, a poverty not just of means, but of spirit. I guess ratcatcher or clean, shaven would be other good comparison points, tho scott's right in comparing it to green's george washington or other nu-malick practitioners.

a dog is shot but it's not graphic and occurs off-screen, as phil noted it's made grueling by the director's approach to the scene. a couple of kangaroo bodies (already dead) are cut up onscreen but that might just be the aussie version of dressing a deer carcass.

part of the problem is the film is so engrossing that even if you don't like what's happening I imagine it would be tough to turn off, but I'm in the seward/justen camp of jaded viewership so take my advice with a grain if not shaker of salt.

xp lol jon stop being me itt

the characters' depressing dead end lives, a poverty not just of means, but of spirit

This is the dominant flavor of the dish.

a dog gets shot but they don't show it onscreen. there is one torture/murder scene that is pretty disturbing. there are a couple of dead bodies. and there are a couple of dead animals that get butchered on screen. that's about it.

sorry for the spoilers, but that spells it out pretty much.

x-post

the torture scene, because of the quality of the acting, is v v harrowing imo.

Ok, I've seen George Washington (long time ago) and Ratcatcher and both were not traumatizing (I liked them). TBH the most small scale spiritually depressing things (as opposed to large scale corruption/global misery type stuff) I have ever seen have all been documentaries/"reality" -- Country Boys, various Frontline docs, one particular episode of Hoarders, a few memorable episodes of Intervention. I won't even start with books. Each one leaves a little bit of a psychic bruise, if that makes sense.

Gore is just nature -- things bleed when you cut them up. It's endless suffering and hopelessness I can't stomach, usually. Y'all need to break your bleakness into more specific categories so I can understand it ;)

its not a horror movie. so there's that. its more like a slice of life thing/local color thing that just happens to be the true story of a local serial killer. its pretty hypnotic and you go along for the ride and that's its power pretty much. you are there with them. everything feels close and yet you also realize that you are a million miles away from these people in a whole lotta ways. its a great psychological piece.

Ok, I think I can handle that.

One more q: Does he only kill women?

i mean the people in this seem really real. and that actually made it more captivating. hannibal lector-type unreal stuff that just revels in unreal cruelty i don't have time for like i did when i was younger. having kids probably plays a part in that. my appetite for horror movies diminished after i had kids.

except for zombies and end of the world movies. i have an infinite capacity for them.

i really liked HELL on streaming netflix! german movie about the end of the world. and it's pretty bleak too. but exciting.

we need to establish a la lechera bleakness scale, with maybe threads at one end and george washington at the other, to accurately pinpoint the bleakness factor of any movies we recommend

btw i support this. just think of how much time it would save!

hannibal lector-type unreal stuff that just revels in unreal cruelty i don't have time for like i did when i was younger
agree -- this is why i thought the most recent season of american horror story was so infuriatingly stupid and boring and wasn't even fun to look at (like argento or w/e)

just read some stuff on the fritzl case, ugh. I think this sums it up:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7d/Mugshot_of_Josef_Fritzl_on_the_night_of_his_arrest.jpg

agggh that picture haunted my nightmares!

[hides]

i had to stop watching the t.v. movie version of girl with the dragon tattoo. the one with the underground torture chamber and all that. i just don't have it in me like i used to. but this movie i definitely was captivated by.

― scott seward, Thursday, January 17, 2013 3:47 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I did the same thing with TV girl w dragon tattoo, shut it off. It was the gratuity mixed with the distinct feeling that it had nothing to communicate to me at all, just a nothing piece of story spinning.

hannibal lector-type unreal stuff that just revels in unreal cruelty i don't have time for like i did when i was younger

agree -- this is why i thought the most recent season of american horror story was so infuriatingly stupid and boring and wasn't even fun to look at (like argento or w/e)

― this customer is a jerk (La Lechera), Thursday, January 17, 2013 3:52 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've been hearing that about Am Horror Story S 2, and that rly sucks to hear because we just finished the first season and I really really liked it on a lot of levels.

LOL this is now rolling new horror movies thread

I feel like I knew from the opening sequence/framing device that it was going to suck, but I was lured by nuns and asylums. Not even nuns and asylums could save it. I mean, if you want bleak human sadness in an asylum, watch Titicut Follies.

maybe jjjusten should replace old man fritzl with a pic of grumpy cat or something

you guys should definitely check out HELL on netflix if you like fast-paced non-zombie end of the world stuff. its in german which just makes it naturally bleaker. has a great ending. its got good tension and suspense and the camera work isn't too annoyingly herky jerky. i dug it.

and there isn't really any gore or "transgressive" modern horror stuff in it. just good old-fashioned suspense.

yeah I'm gonna queue that one up

man, that fritzl story is FUCKED UP - i remember hearing about it but i didn't know any of the details. i have so many questions after reading that whole wiki thing.

besides snowtown the other 2012 movie that knocked me on my ass was oslo, august 31st. bleak in a much different way, but on a similar super-naturalistic kick, also streaming on yr netflixes

the fritzl one is like that recent american one where the woman was imprisoned for years and had a baby. i admit i kinda wanted to read her book when it came out.

LOL on my many browses through the streaming horror row I think I always read that movie title as HEIL not HELL

Oslo Aug 31 I have had queued forever, gotta get to that.

wait i'm not confusing two different things am i? wasn't there an american version of that? the book was a best-seller. but maybe it was just that one.

yeah HELL just looks like some zombie thing or whatever but its pretty good and no zombies. the poster makes it look like the crazies or something.

yeah, except it was her own dad (she wasn't kidnapped) and she had multiple babies by him (and they were basically kaspar hausers)]
i don't know what has happened since she got her freedom -- the whole story threw me around a little bit emotionally!

when jaycee dugard's life story pales in comparison to your own, you have had a pretty fucked up life

xp

Scott, if you mean the novel ROOM, I don't think it was based on any kind of true story?

xp well i guess they weren't kaspar hausers because they had each other and their mom
but that level of severe isolation

yeah, edward got it, jaycee dugard:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Jaycee_Lee_Dugard

fritzl has had a lot of problems obv, she ended up in a longterm relationship with her bodyguard which is kind of poetic

and they were basically kaspar hausers

but that sounds so cute, lots of little muppet-baby proportioned Bruno S's

half of fritzl's kids were raised above ground, the other half in a basement dungeon. after they were released it took a lot of work to reintegrate the two sets of kids. they had some congenital problems from being products of incest. the ones in the basement had a host of issues due to being raised without sunlight in cramped quarters, they were hospitalized for months. one son had trouble walking because he was a couple inches taller than the basement ceiling. the daughter estranged herself from her mother who she blamed her for not doing more to protect her. tho it sounds like they patched things up.

rolling horror/netflix/true crime thread

home away from home

haha

ha i finally watched this and it wasn't as horrifying as i thought
in fact, it was really good
now that i've seen it the picture of the real guys is a lot scarier though

thank god all those posts were not for naught

We also watched Compliance and it was not as depraved as I expected it to be. 0 nightmares. I barely remember it.

compliance looked kinda cheesy so I avoided

I made the mistake of watching this film while on a comedown

i read the true story of Compliance in some magazine and it was so unbelievable and crazy and for some reason that made me not want to see the movie. like, i felt like i had already gone through the emotional ringer just reading about it. so fascinating though on a lot of levels. you would think behavioral scientists would be studying that case 24/7.

omg are you ok

xp

Oh man, this film.

I think I have posted about this film before in another thread, possibly with a glib comment or two.

** Saw an advance screening of this film in 2011 in a cinema located in one of Australia's biggest hipster hubs. About a dozen people walked out during the film.

** I was growing up in Adelaide during the year that the murders took place. It was in an impeccibly deprived area north of the city. Home to generational unemployment, unchecked mental health issues on a widescale, the unwanted members of society shunted into public housing, relentlessly dull streets bordered by dirt and unkempt grass. You couldn't have designed a better venue for such a horrid sequence of events. Generations of bad social policy (from both sides of the Australian and South Australian political spectrum) built up to this.

** ~lol adelaide is murder city~

** Fuck this film is relentless. Me, I was in a working class area, south of the city. A younger twin to the area that the murders took place. (Post-war satellite cities, surrounded by garden suburbs for the working class and English migrants. I note that as one of the drier places on the planet, garden suburbs are an absurd concept. The odd gum tree in the sea of brown dirt and beige grass.) Never had any murders on the southern fringe, thankfully. One girl disappeared, probable kidnapping and murder but she was never found. We weren't allowed to ride our bikes anywhere without telling anyone after that. The streets of this film remind me of certain streets near home. Reminds me of the public housing that radiated on streets behind my home. If anything, it's the streets that make this film so depressing, so relentless. Streets that go nowhere but to the local shop where the dole money can be spend in seconds on ciggies. And in Salisbury/Elizabeth, there is just land and sky. Nothing in between the two levels of flatness. Wide sky, so bloody suffocating.

** The cricket commentary in the background of one scene is damned jarring for me. That's the soundtrack of every schoolboy summer.

** I'm not a big horror film guy. But I've seen horror films. This isn't a horror film. There is no enjoyment to be had here. The murder in the bath is the most brutal, joyless scene one could face.

** I remember when it the real life murders were uncovered. As I'm sure you would expect, it was on the front page of weeks. It was the lead story on the nightly news for week. At the time, I was a moody, sullen, depressed teenager. For some reason, it had not effect on me whatsoever. The news filtered through from discovery to trial to judgement. I always feel detached to it. Possibly because I was in my own world that rejected everything about Adelaide and Australia. I didn't care, it wasn't my world. The older people in my life thought the "Snowtown - You'll Have A Barrel Of A Time!" fridge magnets were hysterically funny.

** The only people who visit Snowtown are people who went the wrong way to the Clare Valley (try the Riesling!)

** Yes, it was jarring to see the guy playing John Bunting as a support character in an Australian romantic comedy a couple of years later. Half expecting him to interrupt a dinner party with a speech on why homosexuals must die before brutally murdering the other young professionals in the scene.

** The worst part of it is the inevitability of it all. Generations of poverty molded a lumpenproletariat, grinded down for as long as memories exist, forever told that they are worth nothing and will be nothing. Deprived out of all hope, all existence, all consciousness. Enter stage right, an immensely sick and evil individual. The wrong man in the wrong place. The man with the gift of charisma, that nobody in this self-hating suburb will ever have. The payoff is that he is, of course, a psychopathic killer with no emotion. Nothing would stop this, there is no society in the way. Society in this fringe of this city known for its arts and wine and good manners is dead.

Booming posts, KBP, thanks.

It's really a good film. The gripping depravity seems real. The bathtub scene is revolting but honestly given the facts of the real-life case, the filmmakers left A LOT of the gruesomeness on the table. Because although the film is shocking, the nature of the crimes was way beyond what the film depicted. That guy was way way creepier and more evil.

The jovial little psychopath.

good stuff KBP

oh, and the shoot the dog scene was awful

Streets that go nowhere but to the local shop where the dole money can be spend in seconds on ciggies.

one of my predominant memories of this film is every room being filled w/ cigarette smoke

It was good detail. Can't remember if glass ashtrays were spotted to complete the effect.

Booming posts, KBP, thanks.

― emil.y, Monday, January 13, 2014 10:39 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if i had seen this in a theatre i probably would have wanted to leave. good thing i was able to hit pause to take a break. this was traumatizing! and good! but now i'm afraid to go to sleep. also liked kbp's posts above.