The Loved Ones - I'd Hate To See The Unloved Ones

And so we come to our first home-grown, Australian horror film, and I'm so very proud to call this a product of Australian innovation, style and obsession with killing things. Kylie Minogue and Dame Edna must be over the moon. This comes from a particular sub-genre of prom related horror flicks, but it is truly original in its premise and carves itself (very intentional wording...) a niche in the market that is wholly its own. If you think you remember your prom as being pretty crap, you got off very lightly. Very, very lightly indeed.

Brent (Xavier Samuel) is driving his Dad home one afternoon when all of a sudden he takes a tree head on and loses magnificently. We cut to six months later to find him still mourning his Dad's death and narrowly avoided necking himself due to the guilt through the love of his girlfriend Holly (Victoria Thaine). Lola (Robin McLeavy) asks him to the formal, but - nawww - he's already committed to Holly. So naturally, Lola's loving father (John Brumpton) kidnaps Brent on the big night and together, he and Lola ensure that it's a night of good old-fashioned domestic abuse that Brent will never forget. Meanwhile, Holly, Brent's Mum and local copper Paul race to find him, but will their efforts be enough to save this particular loved one?

It's a very solid slab of torture porn - not quite as gratuitous as Inside or as wanton as the Saw franchise, but it's torture porn all the same. In this case, I'm not a big fan of this label because it doesn't do this number justice - it's an intense horror, absurd comedy and romantic family drama all at the same time. It's the work of Sean Byrne, an Aussie from Victoria who's dabbled in advertisements and the like. His short film Advantage, Satan can be found on YouTube and is well worth catching if you're up for a cheeky laugh after wetting yourself (I first saw it late night on SBS and had to change channels - watch it alone and in the dark as God intended). With its release in the US at the moment, I have no doubt that Byrne is in for a solid career, and let's hope we'll see him back in this blog with another genre piece in the next few years.

Now the cast are very solid. Brent is set up as a character that you want to survive through his depression, and throwing him in front of the torture-train just adds to the emotional investment you end up establishing. Samuel plays him very well, and the young man can manage the torture face along with the best of them, and perhaps even more importantly, the face of utter defeat. But McLeavy and Brumpton are on a whole 'nother level - just absolutely, fundamentally deranged. There's a palpable father-daughter bond that veers unnervingly close to being reverse-Oedipal, and their glee through the whole process is played so morbidly straight that you just can't look away from the snap, crackle and pop blazing up on screen. The supporting players are all very solid, with a stand-out performance from Richard Wilson as Brent's best mate who enjoys the night of his life with the girl of his dreams. The continual juxtaposition of Brent's evening with his mate's provides great humour and surprising pathos for both parties as things don't always turn out as you'd hoped.

But that whole juxtaposition spiel brings me to talk about this flick's style, and by Jove, it exudes the stuff. It's got a kind of glam rock feel to it from the opening title and the excessive application of glitter, to the music choices and the persistence of that damn disco ball. The pacing is aggressive and the camera-work matches it with some disconcerting angles that ramp up the whole torture feel with a level of discomfort. The editing is also partly to take credit for the freshness of this piece, with cuts that hold just a second too long in moments when you wish this was an M-rated date night movie - but no, you get to watch every icky second because you're a grown up. And perhaps the most impressive thing is the transformation of Kasey Chambers' 'Not Pretty Enough' from a moving ballad of self-loathing and pity to a creepy anthem proclaiming ostracism and even promoting sadism. Experimental musician Ollie Olsen's score rounds out the background players with throbbing hooks and a grungy non-diegetic bass note that just take the squirm factor and advance it a few inches higher up your spine.

AND NOW, FOR THE SPOILERS YOU'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR - A DISCUSSION OF PLOT! To call it inventive wouldn't quite do it justice. The torture is just exquisite, and the brainwave of injecting Drano into his throat to nullify cries for help removes all that repetitive screaming which seems to dominate contemporary horror. In no particular order, poor old Brent has his chest lovingly sculpted with a fork and salt throw in the wounds, his feet pinned to the floor with knives, he gets bludgeoned with a rock whilst up a tree and his subsequent fall is brutally cut short by Daddy's car bonnet, his skull is penetrated by a drill with gruesome realism and he gets thrown into a dungeon with the other 'Loved Ones' - a collection of Lola's schoolmates on whom she had oddly obsessive crushes. The pity you feel for Brent and his now mindless peers (thanks to the boiling water Daddy managed to pour in through their forehead access holes) is overwhelming, and when Brent is cornered and essentially forced to put them out of their misery, you can't help but deeply, passionately hate Lola and her old man. Which totally justifies their respective fates. Last thing I'll add is that the plotting had so many cute tie-ins with the small-town relationships vibe - turns out Lola and old mate inadvertently killed Brent's Dad, and Paul's son was another victim. It may be worked out too neatly in this respect, but I appreciated the self-contained nature of the narrative.

And now, without further ado, the inputs of Albert von Hammerschmidt (NB: he's reminded me to tell you it's pronounced Al-bear) and Susan the loquacious.


Albert von Hammerschmidt's contribution (Transcribed by my newly bought hired Loved Ones lighting engineer #2):
Guten Tag from your favourite sexual offender! I recently hired the entire cast and crew from the 'Loved Ones' to re-enact the movie in my private theatre scene for scene, so I believe that makes me fairly worthy to review this film. I was very impressed with the actors' and actresses' abilities to read and communicate with each other, even with their disability of being part of the spawn of Australian convicts. The make-up was very effective and the dungeon that features in the film bears a striking resemblance to my servant dungeon in Vienna (although, admittedly theirs was much better lit than mine). There was well placed and much appreciated comic relief in the film that I enjoyed so much I offered the fat one a well paying job as my jester. Needless to say he is now experiencing the true meaning of darkness in the aforementioned dungeon, which unfortunately makes him a lot less funny. On the plus side he isn't as fat now due to the brisk Viennese air, and malnutrition in the dungeon.

A hearty recommendation: 4 thinning jesters out of 5.


Susan's contribution (I swear she gets more intelligent every time I talk to her):

fukin awesome dude. susan out. 

All things considered, a bravura effort for a first-timer - bold, creative, cool and totally mental. Australian cinema hasn't been this shaken up since Wolf Creek, and it's a crying shame that this polished effort didn't make much of a splash at the box office. I offer it a score of 8.6 out of a number somewhat larger than 8.6, and I cannot wait for Byrne's sophomore film. Please let it be a horror.


Enjoy a sample with the American release trailer (they do promotion a whole lot better than we on this massive island of convicts): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q431DIGOue8