Reviews

Unusual slow burn examination of shame, crime and revenge in a rural community.

The style is like a thoughtful gently-paced drama, until you realise the story is more a survey of small-town incidents involving extreme religious fervour meets bullying meets revenge meets tragedy meets murder.

The various characters coincidentally keep running in to the sexually motived serial killer couple who prowl for random hitchhikers. Once you shift into the slow pace and random networks format of the film it gets enjoyable.

Totally implausible but gripping and entertaining silliness.

The story is an exercise in making someone look guilty, clearing them, then moving onto the next suspect.

For this to work the detectives need to be the most inept ever. Let's believe the protagonist's suspicions and blame the dead guy with no evidence whatsoever and case closed. Then the final twist reveals someone else really did it after all. Too bad the detectives never pulled the airline records of all potential suspects.

Good cast, decent acting and good production values.

However, the story is a mess and makes no sense. In several slow and repetitive scenes we learn that the small-town main character Dylan mourns her deceased dancer mother and reluctantly goes to the city to audition for a dance troupe at the urging of grandma. Grandma got the month wrong (Dylan at no point having googled the auditions for exact dates, times, addresses, and other required info) but the cleaner at the reception area needs someone to fill in so offers Dylan a job as a cleaner at a nightclub where she can watch and learn from drag queens rehearsing. For some weird reason Dylan takes this cleaner job and tells her family the auditions are proceeding. On arriving for her first shift the frustrated choreographer Victor instantly decides he needs someone to help him imagine the moves so asks Dylan to pose on stage for him - where she reveals she is a dancer. What? Victor is a dancer/choreographer but knows no other dancer he can call on? Victor quickly decides the show needs Dylan and the very petite and feminine Dylan, who knows nothing about drag or gay men, spends 10 minutes making herself over into a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman, in an underdeveloped Victor/Victoria reworking.

The constant hair over the face, back-to-camera, abrupt editing of Dylan's dance routines is to hide the dance double but is very distracting and ruins the dance scenes.

I am not sure how Dylan saved the show. There is a cool routine where each drag performer does a solo bit then Dylan arrives for her bit. But each performer was great on their own and Dylan didn't suddenly teach them those miming, hair, makeup, costume, dance and drag skills. They clearly were all pretty good performers already.

The drag queens convince Dylan to return to the show but then she's cast in a different show with the drag queens watching the rehearsal of it, while a dubbed in line helpfully suggests Dylan can do both shows.

Aside from that there are many ideas hinted at but only lightly explored, and the story leaves many loose ends.

Research: Dame Edna is not a drag queen but a character who happens to be a woman, conceived in 1956 and performed by Australian-born comedian Barry Humphries. Humphries moved to London in 1959. Starting in 1969 his character Edna appeared in London stage shows and later did UK TV shows, and later US and Australian stage tours, TV and movies. Edna did not do "drag" mime and dance performances as such. Edna's appearances were winding down by 2013. Victor says he and Dylan worked with Dame Edna doing drag shows "in Australia". The story, location, timelines make no sense, yet the drag queens and Victor's partner all believe it and are impressed by it.

Good cast and good production values, but the story is so implausible that the film can't really overcome it. The father and brother faking everything so Lucy would never see signs it was not the same Sunday was ridiculous. Repainting the room every night and putting on the same sports game on video when she entered the room? They can never ever leave the house as they have to keep the charade going, every single day. They wouldn't be able to pull this off if they tried. And what about her hair? Did they do her roots and trim her hair when she slept? What about menstruation?

The tone of the film made a few clunky gear changes. It starts with silly, choppy, scenes that suggest Henry is a love and leave type. Why? Then the series of different wooing attempts with Lucy were silly and played like a run of outtakes included on the special features. This part got very repetitive. The later part tried to develop the story but since it was so implausible that didn't really work.

Lucy twigs due to a parking ticket? That was a pretty boring way to make that big shift.

I've seen this twice. Once in the early 1980s once in 2021.

It is reasonably entertaining and sometimes scary but even Prom Night and My Bloody Valentine are probably more effective.

On first viewing I felt it had similarities to Halloween (1978) with an ending borrowed from Carrie (1976). Now I also see similarities to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) - the chase scenes and the helpful older person that meets the heroine - and Black Christmas (1974).

The music seems copied from the Psycho score.

The cast are attractive and all pretty likable. All the guys are shown shirtless for extended scenes painting and chopping wood, and in Speedos and Daisy Dukes. The film kind of limps along with a few random scenes of the youngsters goofing off but we never really get a feeling for their character. So half the time you're confused about who is who. Then when they get killed there's no real emotional response because you never got to know the character anyway.

Some of the deaths are tense in the moments before. Sometimes we see a graphic bloody death. The effects look pretty decent. In the early 1980s they seemed very bloody but by today's standards it is not that gruesome. But half the murders are off screen - we just see the body later. That seems like a waste of a character / murder. Why kill a character in a horror if we do not see the suspense in the lead up to it, or the kill itself? The goofy prank guy Ned could easily have been cut from the film and his antics and silly lines given to Kevin Bacon's character and no one would have noticed as the kids are all so generic. As it is Ned just disappears early on (killed off screen) and no one seems to notice he is missing.

The character of Steve too could have been cut and some of his lines given to Bill no problem. Why did they include the diner bit and all those driving scenes and hitchhiking with Steve? All pointless and led nowhere. Maybe we were meant to think he was the killer? If so that angle didn't really work.

Lacking the slickness of Halloween means the suspense here just doesn't build as well. In Halloween, the viewer knows there is a masked homicidal maniac on the loose, sees them, and knows who it is. That makes it scarier.

This film added the whodunnit angle which many subsequent slashers continued.

The location looks great and is well used.