Movie Review: Hounds of Love

The Australian screen industry is devoted to rebranding your childhood faves as skeezily as possible.

Remember John Jarratt, the friendly green thumb from Better Homes and Gardens? Now he’s our outback nightmare, Mick Taylor from Wolf Creek.

How about that roguish teen from The Year My Voice Broke, Ben Mendelsohn? Since Animal Kingdom, going “Full Mendo” has become a globally accepted term for being menacing to the point of derangement.

Next, Screen Australia is coming for dear old ‘Dug a Hole’ Stephen Curry, of The Castle and those Smith’s Chips ads. In Hounds of Love, Curry plays John White, a voracious serial killer who relies on his battered wife, Evelyn (Emma Booth), to help him kidnap their underage victims, before abusing, dismantling and burying them. (Yes, he digs another hole.)

Like so many recent Australian crime thrillers, Hounds of Love takes its cues from real life incidents. The directorial debut of West Australian filmmaker Ben Young revels in the same ‘backyard brutality’ as Snowtown and Animal Kingdom before it, themselves influenced by Wake in Fright, the ‘patient zero’ of artfully distressing Aussie horror.

This genre has earned itself a reputation for being particularly nasty, potentially exploitative and strangely domesticated. Unlike the supernatural Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers in America, Aussie cinematic killers always seem to live right next door. Yet in the case of Hounds of Love—set during Christmas, 1987—it’s no longer just neighbours who should be feared; it's parental figures. Cinematographer Michael McDermott’s extreme slow-motion, drive-by sequences of ordinary Perth streets set up the dreadful inevitability of the behind-friendly-doors torture that follows.

Hounds of Love

The abductee, Vicky (an unflinchingly committed Ashleigh Cummings), is well versed in the breakdown of her own parents’ marriage, and sees the strain in John and Evelyn’s rocky relationship, even from the bed to which she remains chained. She begs Evelyn to free them both, tapping into her maternal instincts, but Evelyn, manipulated by years of domestic abuse, can’t be convinced of John’s savagery so easily. He oscillates between rage and unexpected sweetness towards her, maintaining a primal hold. Most terrifyingly, their sexual urges remain in sync. Vicki’s attempts to resist them both rarely succeed.

Curry’s an ingenious choice for Hounds of Love; like Jarratt and Mendelsohn, he leans on his ocker mannerisms and casual charm to demonstrate John’s beguiling ability to tempt and entrap women. His history with the audience also adds to the terror; it’s not just that Vicki and Evelyn are abused by him, it’s that we’re watching someone we’ve trusted for decades take advantage of us.

This is indeed a gruelling watch, and not one you’d recommend quickly—or gleefully—to almost anyone. It does, however, offer us a glimpse at Young’s directorial skill. He could very well be the next Justin Kurzel (of Snowtown and later Macbeth), after all. Their pictures even share a droning score, composed here by Dan Luscombe (of The Drones, fittingly).

You’d want to see it for the performances too, including Susie Porter as Vicki’s anguished mum. Best of all is Booth, who isn’t playing an entirely unconscionable villain like Curry’s John. Nonetheless, she does evil, despicable, inexcusable things. How do you feel empathy for someone like that? She finds a way. Hounds of Love is most essential because of her, and how she relays this domestic violence parable.

It’s not a fun watch, and I couldn’t deny my innate desire for more cat and mouse games between Vicki and her captors, or a final visual payoff to the film’s slow-motion device (there’s a perfect opportunity in the closing moments). I’ll admit these are the expectations of someone who wants to be tickled and titillated by their horror movies. Hounds of Love is more in the mould of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, albeit with a more conventional ending and without the finger-wagging.

Hounds of Love takes you to hell for two hours. No one could be blamed for wanting to be anywhere else.

3.5/5

In cinemas June 1. Rated MA15+ for strong themes and violence.