Snowtown (2011)

Based on true events, this Australian drama details the friendship that an Adelaide teen sparked with a neighbour who went on out a vicious killing spree. Daniel Henshall is excellent as the charismatic serial killer with scary moody swings; he has several intense moments as he passionately talks about killing and maiming homosexuals and child abusers while ruing how nobody takes vigilante action against such individuals. With this stance clear early on, 'Snowtown' follows a logical progression as Henshall begins acting on his own words in increasingly brutal ways. Meanwhile, the teen protagonist is torn between wanting to support his new surrogate father and being disgusted by his vile actions. Bits and pieces of this dynamic feel under- cooked; the teenager never changes very much throughout despite becoming more complicit in the murders. Establishing a stronger link between Henshall's hates and his victims' deaths would have also made him easier to understand. By all accounts though, the real killer's motives are still the subject of debate, so the vagueness is arguably appropriate. Whatever the case, the movie features some of the most grueling torture scenes ever filmed, plus it spins a resonating tale of a teenager whose nightmarish, abused home life becomes even more of a nightmare when he reaches out to the one adult in his life who he thinks he can trust.

Snowtown, based on a true story, takes place just North of Adelaide, Australia, where a vulnerable young man, Jamie (Lucas Pittaway), falls in with a psychopath, John (Daniel Henshall), who has an intense hatred for paedophiles, gays, the obese, and drug users. Beginning with the harassment of a perverted neighbour (by chucking kangaroo parts onto his doorstep), John, Jamie, and a couple of other cohorts escalate their attacks, turning to murder.Unrelentingly grim from start to finish, Snowtown certainly isn't easy viewing, its authentic white trash characters and realistic 'wrong side of the tracks' setting adding to the downbeat atmosphere. Rather surprisingly, the film isn't all that gory (graphic kangaroo dismemberment aside), with even the most brutal death scene, that of Jamie's older brother Troy (Anthony Groves), being relatively bloodless. Perhaps the hardest moment to stomach is Troy sodomising his helpless younger brother: now THAT was nasty.Director Justin Kurzel's style takes a little getting used to (the first few scenes are fairly confusing) and there are one or two scenes that I'm still not entirely sure what purpose they serve, but overall Kurzel does a passable job for his full length debut. It's no Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer, but Snowtown is worth watching at least once for those who are fascinated by the darker side of the psyche.

This movie is good in the fact that it portrays the bleakness of sub-lower class, poorly educated living. The filming makes its points and for that part it is a good film. What I object to is the "based on true facts" aspect of the film. It portrays Jamie as being a victim of the whole mass murders. He was crown witness and presided over at least 10 of the murders. He was no victim, he is a coward and should always be remembered as such. He murdered too. That is what makes this movie such a sad "real" story.

A perspective on Australia's most notorious serial Killer, John Bunting (Daniel Henshall), as he was seen by Jamie Vlassakis (Lucas Pittaway), a sixteen-year-old accomplice in series of killings carried out by Bunting and others that came to be known as the Snowtown Murders. The victims were alleged pedophiles, homosexuals, cross-dressers, drug addicts and anyone else the killers determined to be "unclean". When Bunting enters the life of Vlassakis' mother and subsequently takes the young man under his wing, Jamie comes to embrace him as a father figure. The dark path Bunting leads him down is the heart and soul of what makes this story so compelling.The film is extremely well directed and the performances, particularly that of Daniel Henshall as John Bunting, are impeccable. I viewed the film once and had a hard time understanding what was going on in many respects, but after researching the Snowtown Murders and viewing it a second time the intentions of the filmmakers became apparent. What I found to be particularly interesting was how the story was told primarily from the point of view of the killers, and in a way that made it seem as if the filmmakers were almost sympathetic to the killers' perspective. Murder victims were first shown victimizing others, forcing the audience to choose between a feeling of satisfaction or disgust when seeing Bunting ultimately take their lives. This, I would say, is the true strength of this socially conscious film.