Hounds Of Love review: Fresh from its debut internationally at the 2016 Venice Film Festival, and then its UK debut at this year’s Glasgow Film Festival in the UK, comes this hard-hitting thriller fro Australia and filmmaker Ben Young.
Hounds Of Love review by Paul Heath at the 2017 Transilvania International Film Festival.
Hounds Of Love review
Australian filmmaker Ben Young lands a huge sucker punch in Transilvania with the debut of his thriller Hounds Of Love, a taut, harrowing and indeed gripping tale full of unrelenting psychological and physical torture from the outset.
The setting for the film is Perth in Western Australia in the late 1980s. We open to a stylish slow motion tracking shot, seemingly from a moving vehicle, the camera pointed towards a school playground, a group of girls engaged in a game of netball. The shot lingers before cutting to uncomfortable close-ups of their legs and upper bodies but they always remain faceless. A couple look on from a nearby parked car. The setup becomes immediately obvious, and soon the drive and his passenger have picked up a young girl as she heads home from the sports practise, the weather searingly hot.
Hounds Of Love review
Moments later the film descends into darker territory, the visuals concentrating on normal household objects, and then blood, ropes and the horrifying sight of used sex toys. The insinuated has happened, the film cutting swiftly on what seems to be a body being buried deep in the Australian bush by a still an as yet unseen figure.
Next, we’re in a bedroom with 17-year-old Vicki (Ashleigh Cummings) and Jason (Harrison Gilbertson). The two are on the bed making out, obviously a pair of individuals more than keen on one another. Vicky is from a recently broken home, her parents having parted following her mums walking out on her surgeon father. Clearly not coping with the split, Vicki has invested more in her friend and the aforementioned Jason, and is looking forward to a big party in town that night..
The people responsible for the crime that opens the movie are soon introduced; troubled thirty-something couple John (Stephen Curry) and Evelyn (Emma Booth), two very unsettled individuals with a hunger for picking up young girls, taking them back to their one-level suburban home and using them for their own personal sexual gratification.
Related: Berlin Syndrome review
Sneaking out of the home that she now shares with her single mother, Vicki heads to that late night party unbeknown to her mother who sits in the living room next door. On the way to the party in the pitch black on this warm December night, a mysterious car pulls up beside the teen, luring her in with the promise of a cheap hit of marijuana at their nearby home. Absolute horror ensues as young Vicki becomes the next victim of this clearly disturbed duo.
The previous plot description makes Hounds Of Love sound like a fairly generic psychological horror/ thriller, but this is not the case at all. Stylishly crafted with intense drama from the off, Young’s film never shows you the violence or intense horror on screen – if he did, the film will have definitely swayed way into the realms of gratuitous violence – and it’s so much better for it.
Hounds Of Love review
Although some of plot points can be read a mile off – the handwritten letter trick that shows up early on for example – it offers so much in terms of sheer character depth that it more than makes up for it. A lot of this can be credited to its actors, the three at the core of the film mind-blowingly brilliant. A stand out is definitely the young actress Ashleigh Cummings, and alumni of Aussie soap Home and Away, and more recently Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. In a sure-to-be-breakout-role, Cummings is sensational as the heavily tortured Vicki, and as an actress shows unbelievable braveness partaking in some truly horrific scenes that could not have been even the slightest bit easy. Also of the highest order is Emily Booth’s Evelyn, again a very distressed woman in a very different was as she does anything to please her partner John, and ultimately win back custody of her two estranged children. Stephen Curry is absolutely terrifying as the unpredictable captor John, again an actor unafraid to push the boundaries in this extremely unlikable and very fierce role.
Filmmaker Ben Young shows huge promise as one to watch, the director and writer making his debut with an extremely strong turn that will have you on the edge of your seat throughout. The film is extremely gritty, and while simple in its approach, is executed with such force and frenetic energy that it will have you quivering as it’s fraught climax approaches. My heart was literally racing during the final scenes. An outstanding genre piece which, while not for the faint of heart or easily sickened, deserves your attention. A perfect companion piece to this month’s Berlin Syndrome – if you can stomach it.
Hounds Of Love review by Paul Heath, June 2017.
Hounds Of Love screens and was reviewed at the 2017 Transilvania International Film Festival. It will be released in UK cinemas on 28th July.
