What sets Australian horror movies apart? They don’t flinch. They show their bared, gritted teeth in every scene. The perilous Outback; the peculiar, off-kilter characters; how alienated and unpleasant outsiders can be made to feel – for decades, Australian writers and directors have twisted our stereotypes of their country as a rough, unforgiving landscape into something worth being frightened about. Talk To Me, the latest Australian horror to make a splash, joins that lineage.
The debut feature from YouTube filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou — also known as RackaRacka — injects an urgent, propulsive energy into the possession subgenre. In it, jaded teenagers connect with the souls of the damned via a graffitied, embalmed hand – just for kicks. A sick sense of humour runs through the film, as does a fixation of gnarly violence and in-your-face horror. Classic themes of grief and trauma hit like raw nerves in the Philippou brothers’ hands.
But Talk To Me wouldn’t exist without the landmark Aussie horror films that have similarly changed the game in decades past. For those who don’t know their Babadooks from their bush slashers, here’s a starter pack to all things scary down under.
The entry points are… Wolf Creek and Wake in Fright
Australia is massive. The Outback is so sparse, remote and punishing that it’s spawned its own horror subgenre, where tourists and cityfolk become prey to psychopathic locals who know no-one will hear their screams. A variation on American horror like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes, independent survival horror Wolf Creek profited off the early 2000s “torture porn” boom, staging the Outback as a bare-bones hunting ground for a vile, opportunistic mechanic, and firmly set the tone for every rip-off to come. (See also: Killing Ground and Outback.)
But every Outback horror can be traced back to Wake in Fright, a key film from the 70s Australian New Wave, in which a mild-mannered schoolteacher holidays in an arid mining town, not realising he will never be the same person again. The film showed how wild elements, rather than individuals, could rot a person to their core and push them to inhuman, barbaric behaviour. It’s a terrifying prospect, but Wake in Fright makes it feel scarily plausible.
The one everyone’s seen is… The Babadook
“Elevated” horror has received its fair share of detractors, but back in 2014 the prospect of getting intelligent, emotionally-driven scary stories felt electric. Audiences flocked to witness The Babadook, Jennifer Kent’s tale of grief and trauma (which both Danny and Michael Philippou were crew members on!) in which a children’s bedtime story that’s “European folktale” levels of inappropriate for kids harasses a recently widowed mother, with the titular monster disturbing them until they confront the pain they’ve tried to bury. It’s one of the only Aussie horrors to become absorbed into meme culture after it went viral for not being an appropriate wine night costume and for becoming an inadvertent – but welcome – queer icon.
Necessary viewing… Lake Mungo
In a uniquely late-2000s move, one of the most inventive and chilling Australian horror films only got a wide release when it was picked up for inclusion on the DVD boxset After Dark HorrorFest 2010 — a full two years after it premiered in Sydney. This paranormal investigation faux-documentary has gone on to make a name for itself online in the past decade; for such an unusual and unassuming horror, it’s fitting it crept towards popularity in a very quiet, staggered way.
Joel Anderson’s film looks into the supernatural phenomena surrounding a family after their daughter drowns, and channels those digitally-shot ghost sighting videos that, against all odds, get under your skin late at night. As much inspired by Twin Peaks as it is BBC’s Ghostwatch, Lake Mungo is relentlessly creepy, achingly sad and packs one of the best jump scares in all of horror.
The under-appreciated gem is… The Loved Ones
Not often does a film as imaginatively gruesome and mean-spirited remain in relative obscurity nearly 15 years after its release; The Loved Ones deserves to be remembered with the same buzz it received at its 2009 Toronto Film Festival premiere. A grieving teenage boy regrets passing on his classmate’s offer of a date to the end of year dance when he finds himself bound and gagged in her home, where her devoted father has arranged a private party to punish another boy who rejected his darling daughter. Sean Byrne’s film is, as Aussies would say, cooked, constantly upping the ante on its sadistic violence and shocking twists. (Shoutout to surprise basement reveals!) It’s a terrific midnight movie, with a vein of genuine melancholy weaving through the story, building an unorthodox patchwork of the lonely teen experience.
The deep cut is… Next of Kin
For those who love their horror subdued, Gothic and old-school, Next of Kin puts an Aussie spin on Dario Argento mysteries and classic British ghost stories. A young woman returns to the remote manor (now a care home) she inherited from her late mother. The scraps of diaries and strange, senile occurrences she finds drive her towards a violent revelation about her family’s past. The film finds something supernatural about returning to sites of your childhood and inheriting suppressed secrets, leading to a chaotically-shot climax that lets loose a violent scream into Australia’s wilderness.