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It feels strangely awkward watching movies about people who talk and behave like me! I know I’m not alone in that; Australian cultural cringe is a well studied phenomenon, and we don't exactly have a local equivalent of Hollywood churning out all-Aussie blockbusters on a regular schedule. When I think of Australian cinema, I think of boring arts grant dramas that no one wants to watch and culturally hyperspecific comedy that we don't want anyone else to watch lest the world know us for the bunch of dags we really are. Fun, tropey genre films are supposed to be about Special Fake Movie People with accents I've never heard in person and manners that are upside down from mine.

And yet, as I'm learning through my local library's streaming service, there's some really good Australian horror out there. I couldn't tell you exactly where to find these overseas, but at least some of them appear to have had international releases, so for all I know, they're on Netflix for you guys. I'd be so thrilled to hear what people without my cultural biases think. :D

The Tunnel (2011): This is a mockumentary about a news crew who fall foul of a mysterious subterranean killer while investigating a lead related to Sydney's network of abandoned train tunnels. The tunnels are real, and I vaguely remember hearing spooky rumours about them during the early 2010s, which I'm now thinking may have been part of a guerrilla marketing campaign for this film, lol. Anyway, this one scared the everloving shit out of me. The vibes are fantastic, the mockumentary gimmick is executed flawlessly, and most of all everything was just so familiar. I used to get everywhere I ever needed to go on those exact Sydney trains. The characters are completely normal, relatable Aussies of the kind you could meet everyday on the street. The actual plot is a bit thin but I was happy to overlook the silly bits because it was just such a damn enjoyable viewing experience. And the monster was SO FUCKING CREEPY. Pick this one if you like mockumentaries and/or wish to know more about ya girl from dreamwidth's old commute.

Relic (2020): A mother and daughter drive out to a small town in rural Victoria to check on grandma, whose neighbours haven't seen her in days. She is missing when they arrive, but reappears in the house days later, unwilling or unable to explain where she's been. Her stately country house is covered in what looks like black mould and there's a terrible black bruise on her chest. This is a heartwrenching film about the grief of losing an elderly parent to dementia, and also a fantastic haunted house story full of dark family secrets, unanswered questions and unexplained paranormal phenomena. The creaky old house and the damp, miserable evergreen forest surrounding it threw me back to the days of visiting my own grandparents. It really does capture the highly specific atmosphere of a certain kind of well-off but precipitously ageing rural town in southeastern Australia; I swear I could almost taste the air. For whatever it's worth, the Russo brothers are credited as executive producers; I don't know much about movie production and have honestly never been sure what kind of role an executive producer plays, but hey, those were two names I recognised. Take or leave the name recognition, though - I loved this movie either way.

Talk To Me (2022): A group of South Australian teens acquire an embalmed hand that lets them summon dead souls to temporarily possess them. But one of their séance parties goes too far, and a malevolent spirit decides it doesn't want to leave. This is a mix of paranormal and psychological horror that's as much about grief (the protagonist lost her mother to a very obvious suicide that her dad won’t admit to her was suicide) as about bloodthirsty ghosts. I am not sure why reviewers chose to bill a movie this thoroughly depressing as "fun" - it was fun at the start, sure, but by the end it had descended to a truly tragic place. I liked it a lot! But it definitely belongs on the downer end of the mood spectrum.

You'll Never Find Me (2023): In an isolated trailer park in the middle of the night, a young woman knocks on an older man's door to beg shelter from a violent thunderstorm. The woman is desperate, drenched, and seems unable to get her story straight about how she got there or where she came from; the man is withdrawn and antisocial and was drinking alone before the woman arrived. They both seem frightened of each other. Something about the situation is unmistakably off, but what it is exactly, the film plays close to its chest for the first exquisitely slow hour. This is a quiet, cagey movie that ratchets up the tension through unnerving not-quite-normal dialogue and uncomfortable just-barely-off-centre close-ups so that when things finally start going overtly wrong at around the hour mark, it feels almost like a relief - pain is easier to bear than the anticipation of it. I don't often enjoy trippy, "what the fuck is happening here" type stories and I REALLY don't often enjoy stories that end in the particular kind of twist this one used, but in this case I was absolutely sold on everything. Brilliant movie. Raised my blood pressure so high I had to flop on the couch and just breathe for like half an hour afterwards. No notes.