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.

"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.

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.

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.