Pictured clockwise, from left: Lee Tiger Halley, Mark Coles Smith, Maximillian Johnson and Joel Nankervis in “Beast of War” (Photo courtesy of Well Go USA)
Culture Representation: Taking place in Australia and in the Indian Ocean’s Timor Sea, in 1942, the horror film “Beast of War” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Asian and indigenous people) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: After their ship crashes and overturns, seven World War II Australian soldiers get stranded in the Indian Ocean’s Timor Sea, where they are attacked by a great white shark.
Culture Audience: “Beast of War” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching faking-looking monster movies that are derivative and have laughably bad dialogue.
Mark Coles Smith in “Beast of War” (Photo courtesy of Well Go USA)
“Beast of War” is a poorly staged and sloppily edited movie about World War II soldiers attacked by a great white shark while stranded at sea. The acting is as terrible as the idiotic dialogue and awful visual effects. None of it looks believable.
Written and directed by Kiah Roache-Turner, “Beast of War” is supposed to take place mostly in the Indian Ocean’s Timor Sea. But all the scenes that are supposed to be in large bodies of water look like they were filmed in a very controlled studio. The movie is also lighted unnaturally, with glowing hues that wouldn’t be found in this environment in real life. This moody lighting is something you might see in a nightclub, not in shark-infested open waters. This phoniness is why “Beast of War” relentlessly insults viewers’ intelligence.
“Beast of War” (which takes place in 1942) begins by showing the soldiers during boot camp in an unnamed wooded area in Australia. The main protagonist is Leo (played by Mark Coles Smith), a heroic type, who immediately clashes with arrogant sleazeball Des Kelly (played by Sam Delich), which leads to a rivalry that affects what happens later in the movie. As shown in the movie, Des has a grudge against Leo because Leo ambushed Des and defeated Des during a boot camp combat training exercise.
The movie wastes some time showing mostly small talk and other activities that reveal nothing about these soldiers’ personal backgrounds or personalities. Leo is portrayed as a stereotypical “good guy,” while Des is portrayed as a stereotypical “bad guy.” All the other soldiers in the movie have generic personalities, except for an eccentric loner named Thompson (played by Sam Parsonson), whose nickname is Tommy.
“Beast of War” has a few scenes where Leo and his boot camp pal Will (played by Joel Nankervis) flirt with two nurses named Susan, nicknamed Susie (played by Laura Brogan Browne), and Hazel (played by Lauren Grimson), who slow dances with Will when Leo and Will sneak off to the nurses’ camp to meet up with Susie and Hazel. These nurses are never seen again in the movie.
That’s because after this rendezvous, the soldiers go on a ship somewhere in the Timor Sea. An explosion (presumably a bomb) causes the ship to crash and sink in the ocean. Most of the people on the ship do not survive this explosion.
However, seven of the soldiers end up on a wooden raft as they fight for survival: Leo, Des, Will, Thompson, Bobby (played by Tristan McKinnon), Teddy (played by Lee Tiger Halley) and Stan (played by Maximillian Johnson). They’ve got one gun, three grenades, a tin of peaches, a can of gas, a knife, two rescue flares and no fresh water. It’s also very foggy during the beginning of their ordeal.
The raft is not too far from a small motorboat that could be their way to get to shore safely. They don’t know if the motorboat will work, but someone has to swim to the motorboat to find out. The stranded soldiers are also at risk of being attacked by Japanese military that’s monitoring the area. And there’s another big problem: Soon after the stranded soldiers end up on the raft, a great white shark attacks.
The first time the shark attacks, it leaps out of the water to bite someone on the raft. And even though the shark is large, there’s no mistaking what it is, someone still screams: “What the fuck was that?” Leo answers, “Shark. A big one.” This is the type of brain-dead dialogue that pollutes the film. Some of the dialogue is also too modern for 1942.
Leo knows a lot about sharks because his younger brother Archie (played by Aswan Reid) was killed by a shark, as seen in flashbacks. Leo witnessed this brutal death, and he is still haunted by it. That’s the only backstory that’s given to Leo, who gets more background information in the movie than the other characters get.
In every shark attack movie, at least someone seems to lose a limb. In this movie, it’s Stan who has this unlucky fate first. His left leg is bitten off by the shark. There are some unrealistic “shark versus man” scenes underwater. And the movie gets more ridiculous as it goes along.
“Beast of War” has a lot of shouting and bloody scenes, but it’s just gory noise that has no creativity or real suspense. It’s a horror movie that’s never very scary, especially because the shark looks like a throwaway animatronic from an amusement park. It’s also very easy to predict and who will die in this movie. A caption in the beginning of “Beast of War” says that the movie is “inspired by true events,” but this low-quality abomination looks as realistic as a shark assembling a gas station toilet.
Well Go USA released “Beast of War” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and on VOD on October 10, 2025. Shudder and AMC+ will premiere the movie on January 16, 2026.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Australia, the horror film “We Bury the Dead” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few indigenous people and black people) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: After a nuclear accident in Australia’s island state of Tasmania leaves about 500,000 people dead and turns other people into zombies, a physical therapist travels to Tasmania to find her husband and has unexpected encounters.
Culture Audience: “We Bury the Dead” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Daisy Ridley and zombie movies that are less about gore and more about the psychological impact of a zombie apocalypse.
Daisy Ridley in “We Bury the Dead” (Photo courtesy of Vertical)
“We Bury the Dead” is a different type of zombie apocalypse movie that is more about psychological effects for uninfected survivors than on gory action scenes. The movie has unanswered questions but interesting performances. “We Bury the Dead” will frustrate viewers who are expecting to see a lot of battle scenes between uninfected zombies and uninfected human survivors. The movie has some zombie/human fight scenes, but they are mostly one-on-one fights, and they don’t get a lot of screen time in “We Bury the Dead.”
Written and directed by Zak Hilditch, “We Bury the Dead” had its world premiere at the 2024 Adelaide Film Festival and its North American premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival. The movie takes place mostly in Australia’s island state of Tasmania. “We Bury the Dead” was filmed in Australia’s Great Southern Region, particularly in the city of Albany.
“We Bury the Dead” begins by showing a flashback to the wedding of physical therapist Ava (played by Daisy Ridley) and renewable energy executive Mitch (played by Matt Whelan), who are both in their 30s. Ava is American. Mitch is Australian. Their wedding is a happy occasion, but these wedding scenes are interrupted by a present-day voiceover of Ava frantically leaving voice messages for Mitch.
“Tell me you’re okay,” Ava says while breathing heavily, as if she’s panicking. “I’m scared. I need you. I love you. I’ll keep trying.” It’s later revealed that Mitch and Ava do not have children, but they have been trying to start a family, with no luck.
News reports on TV show that Australia has recently experienced a disastrous tragedy: The U.S. military accidentally deployed an experimental weapon off of the coast of Tasmania the week before. About 500,000 people across Tasmania died as a result of this catastrophe. The city of Hobart was completely decimated. An untold number of other people are “undead” zombies.
Mitch had traveled to Tasmania for a business conference/retreat and was staying at a place called Enso Resort when the disaster happened. The resort, much like most of Tasmania, is now considered a disaster area, where there is no communication available through technology. Mitch is considered a missing person.
Ava is determined to find Mitch. And so, she travels by airplane to Tasmania, on a flight where many other loved ones of missing people are also taking this trip for similar reasons. The Australian government has a volunteer “body retrieval” program, where adult civilians go to Tasmania and get bodies that need to be buried or cremated. Ava has signed up for this volunteer program because it’s the best way to get access to areas that are otherwise off-limits to the general public.
When she gets to the check-in area for the body retrieval job, Ava mentions to a briefing colonel (played Kim Fleming) that Ava’s husband is missing in Tasmania. The colonel warns Ava that if Ava uses her work time to find Ava’s husband instead of retrieving bodies, then Ava will be sent home. Ava says she understands, but you can tell Ava doesn’t care about this warning because her main goal will still be to find Mitch.
Ava attends a very short orientation session with other new volunteers. A military official named Captain Vance (played by Dan Paris) informs the group that the stories that they might have heard are true: There are survivors in Tasmania who are walking around as if “the lights are on but nobody’s home.” He doesn’t use the word “zombie,” but his message is clear: Be on the lookout for these zombies. Ava also finds out that the longer these survivors are in a zombie state, the more aggressive and violent they get.
“We Bury the Dead” has a few flimsy plot holes that are not adequately addressed. The volunteers are given no real training on how to do body disposals and are not required to wear any safety gear (such as hazmat suits) and are not supplied with any weapons. It’s a very irresponsible for a government to put civilians (most of whom are untrained rescue workers) in this type of danger, when it’s still unknown what the hazards and side effects will be of disaster caused by a weapon of mass destruction. You don’t have to be scientist to know that the existence of zombies is proof that people have been infected.
In the beginning of the movie, “We Bury the Dead” makes a brief mention of the international political fallout of this disaster. A TV news report says that protests in Washington, D.C., have escalated. Pressure has reached a “fever pitch” from the United Nations and the Australian prime minister to hold the U.S. president accountable for this disaster. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense that the Australian government would put Australian residents in more jeopardy by starting a volunteer “body retrieval” program without giving the volunteer workers any common-sense protections.
Questionable government decisions aside, “We Bury the Dead” is mostly an intimate portrait of how this work affects Ava. The volunteer body retrievers are supposed to work with at least one partner. Ava’s first partner (played by Deanna Cooney), who doesn’t have a name in the movie, ends up quitting immediately because the job is more traumatic than she thought it would be, and she wants to go back home to her daughters.
Ava’s next partner is a roguish type named Clay (played by Brenton Thwaites), who takes a hardened and cynical approach to this type of work. Ava is more emotional and is more concerned about following safety protocol than Clay is. At first, Ava wears an optional gas mask on the job, but Clay mocks her for it. Ava, just like Clay, ends up wearing no safety gear. As for weapons to fight the violent zombies, Ava’s weapon of choice is an axe, which she finds on her own. Just like in other zombie movies, “We Bury the Dead” shows that zombies can be killed by blows to their heads.
It takes a while, but Clay and Ava eventually open up to each other about their closest relationships and why they decided to volunteer for this body retrieval job. But another shortcoming of the movie is reveals nothing about the families of Ava and Mitch. It’s possible that Ava and Mitch could be estranged from their families, but the movie doesn’t say either way.
“We Bury the Dead” does reveal some more information about what Ava and Mitch’s marriage was like before Mitch went on the business trip. The movie also shows if Clay agrees to help Ava find Mitch. During their time together, Ava and Clay encounter a lone military official named Riley Harris (played by Mark Coles Smith), who has an agenda of his own. Something to do with Riley’s personal life ends up being a factor in the movie’s climactic scene. This low-budget film has believable visual effects, as well as convincing makeup and hairstyling for the zombies.
“We Bury the Dead” is somewhat of a “buddy movie” that shows how two people with differences in their personalities and backgrounds can meet under unusual circumstances and learn to trust each other while working together. Thwaites is believable in his role as rebellious Clay. Ridley gives a fairly adequate performance that is slightly marred by her inconsistent speaking accent for this role. Ava is American, but Ridley (who is British in real life) sounds American or British in her portrayal of Ava. It’s a minor flaw that doesn’t ruin the movie, but it’s a distraction that could’ve been prevented with better direction.
One of the best aspects of “We Bury the Dead” is the visually artistic cinematography by Steve Annis. The movie skillfully conveys the dichotomy of being in an area with wide open spaces but still feel doom and claustrophobia of being stuck in this area because zombies can suddenly appear and attack. “We Bury the Dead” will bore or annoy people who expect the movie to be a more typical zombie film that has epic chases and fight scenes. But for people who are open to a more introspective look at surviving a zombie apocalypse, “We Bury the Dead” can be a satisfying movie experience.
Vertical released “We Bury the Dead” in U.S. cinemas on January 2, 2026. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in U.S. cinemas on December 22, 2025.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Sydney, Australia, the horror film “The Banished” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with one black person) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A young woman and her former geography teacher look for her missing older brother in a remote wooded area, and they encounter terror in the woods.
Culture Audience: “The Banished” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of horror movies about bad things that happen in the woods, but this entire movie is a bad thing that has happened to horror cinema.
A scene from “The Banished” (Photo courtesy of Brainstorm Media)
Incoherent and tedious, “The Banished” has too many lazy clichés and plot holes in this horror movie about the search for a missing man in a remote wooded area. The story and characters fail to be interesting. There are some attempts to present some unique horror imagery, but it’s all style over substance.
Written and directed by Joseph Sims-Dennett, “The Banished” had its world premiere at the 2024 edition of Beyond Fest. “The Banished” takes place in Sydney, Australia, where the movie was filmed on location. Expect to see a lot of scenes of people looking lost and disoriented in the woods, much like “The Banished” is lost and disoriented.
“The Banished” is told in non-chronological order, which makes this disjointed movie even messier. It’s also one of those horror movies that wants viewers to keep guessing if what is beng shown on screen is supposed to be the story’s reality or a hallucination by one of the characters. There’s also inconsistency about what this movie is attempting to say life after death.
“The Banished” begins by showing protagonist Grace Jennings (played by Meg Clarke), who is in her mid-20s, at a campsite in the woods in a mountainous location called Rear Valley National Park. She looks in an empty tent and runs frantically near a cliff and shouts repeated, “Mr. Green?” Grace is obviously looking for someone named Mr. Green, whom she thought was in the tent, but he has apparently disappeared.
Who is Mr. Green? “The Banished” takes a long time (about halfway through the movie) to answer that question. It’s not spoiler information to say that Mr. Green (played by Leighton Cardno) is Grace’s former geometry teacher from high school. Grace meets up with Mr. Green, after not seeng him for years, to ask for his help in finding Grace’s older brother David Jenninngs (played by Gautier de Fontaine), who has been missing for several months.
Before Grace meets up with Mr. Green, the first half of the movie shows her moping around by herself or having dreary conversations with people. Near the beginning of the movie, Grace leaves unanswered voice mail message to David to tell him that their father has died. Grace was semi-estranged from David and hadn’t been in contact with him for months, but she is now convinced that he is missing because he won’t return her calls about their deceased father.
After the funeral, Grace collects some of her father’s belongs from a priest named Father Jennings (played by Adrian D’Arcy), who tells Grace her father left his inheritance to the church. Grace is cold and indifferent to Father Jennings, who makes this cryptic comment to Grace about her deceased father: “He spoke about you a lot—the golden child. I’m very sorry for your loss. You’re being tested right now. Listen to him.”
And where is Grace’s mother? The movie doesn’t give details but conversations in the movie indicate that Grace’s mother (played by Diane Smith) is still alive somewhere and possibly mentally ill or has dementia. Grace visits her uncle Rex (played by Tony Hughes), whom she hasn’t seen in years. Rex tells her that his wife Margaret, nicknamed Margy (played by Cassandra Hughes), left about a year ago, and he doesn’t know where she is. Grace eventually sees a missing person flyer for Margy.
Conversations in the movie reveal that David is a very troubled person with a drug addiction who was expelled from the family’s church. David has a drug-addicted girlfriend who has also gone missing. It might explain why Grace doesn’t go to police about her missing brother, but she is never shown taking the time to report him missing.
David and his girlfriend were mostly likely homeless, according to the vague information that Grace is able to find out. She also discovers from that some of the vagrants in the area get picked up by a van that takes them to a wooded area that is described to the passengers as “utopia.”
Grace sees Mr. Green loading some of these people in this mysterious van. She later finds out where Mr. Green lives and shows up at his house unannounced. They haven’t seen each other since Grace was in high school. Grace tells Mr. Green that David is missing and asks for Mr. Green’s help in finding him.
Grace says to Mr. Green that she saw him driving the van with the vagrants and asks him to take her to the place where he dropped off the vagrants. Grace suspects that David is there. This place turns out to be Rear Valley National Park. Later in the woods, Grace finds a book of demonic drawings signed by someone named Thomas Jennings.
All of the characters in “Banished” are duller than the dirt in this park. The performances don’t have any charisma and just plod along with the lines of dialogue are recited. Hardly anything about Grace is revealed except that she has multiple people in her family who are dead or missing. And the reasons why vagrants are being transported to this wooded area are so obvious, there’s no real mystery about it and what will probably happen next.
“The Banished” is presented like a fever dream experienced by Grace. All that means is that there are many repetitive scenes where not much is happening except Grace looking confused. The last third of the movie tries to have suspenseful action, but it’s really a weak imitation of many other slasher films. By the end of this wretched movie, many questions are left unanswered. Most viewers probably won’t care because “The Banished” doesn’t have enough in this empty story for most people to feel anything but regret for wasting time watching this junk.
Brainstorm Media released “The Banished” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on July 18, 2025.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Australia, the dramatic film “Inside” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class and are connected in some way to the Australian prison system.
Culture Clash: Three men living in an Australian prison have a collision course of personal entanglements inside and outside of the prison.
Culture Audience: “Inside” will appeal primarily to fans of the movie’s headliners and emotionally raw movies about people living in prison.
Cosmo Jarvis in “Inside” (Photo courtesy of Quiver Distribution)
“Inside” is similar to other gritty prison dramas, such as 2009’s “Bronson” and and 2014’s “Starred Up,” where the performances are better than the absorbing but flawed screenplays. Redemption and punishment are open to intepretation. In other words, this is not the type of movie that gives easy answers or has a tidy ending.
Written and directed by Charles Williams, “Inside” is his feature-film directorial debut. The movie had its world premiere at the 2024 Melbourne International Film Festival and its North American premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Festival. “Inside” takes place in Australia, where the movie was filmed.
Inside focus on three main characters, who are all living at the Gadara Prison for men:
Mel Blight (played by Vincent Miller) is a brooding 17-year-old who has recently been transferred from a juvenile detention center. Mel has one year before he is eligible for a parole release. He is incarcerated for brutally assaulting a schoolmate when they were both about 12 years old, during a playground fight. The other boy died from his injuries. Mel has been incarcerated since he was 12.
Mark Shepard (played by Cosmo Jarvis), who is in his 30s, committed first-degree murder when he was 13 years old. He is perhaps the prison’s most notorious inmate. A TV news report describes Mark as committing “one of the worst crimes this country has ever seen.” What did Mark do? He raped and murdered an 11-year-old boy.
Warren Murfett (played by Guy Pearce), who is in his late 50s, has a long history of committing crimes. His most recent prison sentence has been for assault and drug possession. Warren, who is in recovery for addictions to meth and alcohol, has an upcoming parole hearing in the beginning of the movie. Warren is considered to be a “model prisoner” who’s capable of saying and doing the right things stay out of trouble in prison.
When Mel first arrives at the prison, he’s assigned to be Mark’s cellmate. It’s one of the flaws of the screenplay, because in real life, it’s highly unlikely that a murderer of Mark’s notoriety would be matched with a teenage newcomer for a cell mate. In the movie, Mark mixes freely with the prison’s general population. In real life, a murderer such as Mark would be kept in a more restrictive part of the prison, partly for punishment and partly for the prisoner’s own safety.
What “Inside” portrays accurately about the prison system is that inmates who are convicted of first-degree sexual murderers of children are considered the lowest of the low in prison hierarchy. These types of murderers often have targets on their backs to be singled out for assaults or worse by other inmates and/or prison employees. One of the subjective questions presented throughout “Inside” is whether not Mark is worthy of forgiveness. Without revealing too much of the movie’s plot, there’s a reason why the lives of Mel, Mark and Warren intertwine, other than the fact that they are all living in the same prison.
Mark has become a born-again Christian, who preaches at the prison chapel, but there are numerous people inside and outside the prison who despise him and want Mark to die. Australia does not have the death penalty. And some people who believe that Mark has changed for the better believe that he should be paroled because he committed the murder when he was a child. Mark also wants to be paroled, but he knows the odds are stacked against him.
Mel does not know what crimes Mark committed when Mel becomes Mark’s cellmate. However, Mel instinctively feels uneasy around Mark and asks to be transferred to another cell. In the meantime, Mel is careful not to do anything that might anger or offend Mark. For example, he agrees to play keyboards during Mark’s chapel services.
Mark shows Mel some illustrations that Mark made. These illustrations look like they were made by a child, which is an indication that Mark has some developmental issues. The point the movie is trying to make is that Mark might be a man physically, but emotionally, he has some child-like qualities. There are indications that Mark could be on the autism spectrum, but there is no discussions in the movie about Mark possibly having this medical condition.
Mark talks like he’s got a mouthful of marbles, but when he’s up on the chapel pulpit preaching, he has a commanding presence and gets people’s attention, even if some of that attention is jeering and heckling from some people in the audience. Mark also speaks in tongues and rants in Latin when “the Holy Spirit” overtakes him. Is Mark a fraud? Or has he genunly become a pious and remorseful person?
Meanwhile, prison officials decide that Warren would make a good mentor to troubled Mel, who is usually quiet but who occasionally lashes out with a violent temper. For example, there’s a scene where Mel has some type of angry meltdown and starts bashing a chair at a prison window that doesn’t break. Flashbacks and voiceover narration from Mel throughout the movie reveal that he has unresolved issues about his own father’s imprisonment. (Raif Weaver has the role of pre-teen Mel in these flashbacks. Angus Cerini has the role of Mel’s father.)
Warren and Mel develop a tentative friendship that is almost like a father/son relationship. Warren has his own parental issues, including an estrangement from his young adult son Adrian Murfett (played by Toby Wallace), who has a short but impactful scene in the movie. One of the things that Mel and Warren like to do on a regular basis is a game where Mel asks Warren trivia questions about pop culture, and Warren does his best to answer the questions correctly. These moments are some of the few comforting interactions in what is otherwise a depiction of an often-bleak and tension-filled existence.
Mel battles with feelings of self-hatred and doesn’t have much hope that he could be paroled early. He says in a voiceover: “People like us shouldn’t be released. We’re broken … You can see it in us, even as kids.” The movie subtly floats the ongoing “nature versus nurture” debate of whether or not hardcore criminals are born or made, without leaning more toward one side over the other.
Miller (who makes his feature-film debut in “Inside”) and Peace give authentically raw performances as the emotionally damaged Mel and Warren, who both have personal demons that they don’t like to discuss out loud. Mel has barely repressed rage issues that Mel doesn’t know how to handle. Warren has a world-weary attitude of regrets that he admits to but wants to forget. The performance of Jarvis as Mark is much more complex because it keeps people guessing about how sincere Mark is about being redeemed.
Many movies about prison depict a constant sense of danger and inmates with big personalities. “Inside” has those elements but also skillfully portrays the monotony of living on a regimented prison schedule and the ways that certain inmates build trust with each other in an environment that often teaches that no one can be trusted. As hopeless and grim as life can be in prison, “Inside” also shows in unflinching ways that prison reform can be difficult for some incarcerated people if life on the outside of prison is tougher to navigate than being inside prison.
Quiver Distribution released “Inside” in select U.S. cinemas on June 20, 2025. The movie was released in Australia on February 27, 2025.
Culture Representation: Taking place on Australia’s Gold Coast, the horror film “Dangerous Animals” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: An American woman, who is a drifter/surfing enthusiast, is kidnapped by a serial killer, who drops his victims into a shark-ridden ocean and videorecords his victims getting killed by sharks.
Culture Audience: “Dangerous Animals” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of tension-filled slasher horror films where the killers are sharks and humans.
Josh Heuston in “Dangerous Animals” (Photo courtesy of Independent Film Company and Shudder)
“Dangerous Animals” is a taut horror film about a serial killer who murders some of his victims by feeding them to deadly sharks in the ocean. Jai Courtney gives an unforgettably sinister performance as an example that humans can be the most dangerous animals of all. The movie has some predictable moments, but the suspenseful tone is top-notch, and the cast members’ acting is better than what the average horror movie has to offer.
Directed by Sean Byrne and written by Nick Lepard, “Dangerous Animals” was filmed on location on Australia’s Gold Coast, where the movie takes place. There’s no mystery about who’s the serial killer because the first scene in the movie reveals who he is. The killer is a muscular loner named Bruce Tucker (played by Courtney), who goes by the name Tucker. He operates a business called Tucker’s Experience, where he takes customers (who are usually tourists) on his medium-sized fishing boat and lowers them in a cage so they can get an up-close look at sharks.
A grizzled elderly sailor named Dave (played by Rob Carlton) often refers customers to Tucker. Dave has no idea that Tucker is really a serial killer, Tucker kidnaps some of his customers, drops them into the ocean by crane when there are deadly sharks nearby, and videorecords these barbaric killings. Even though the movie takes place in the 2020s, Tucker still uses VHS tapes and VHS video cameras to document the murders. He keeps a collection of these murder tapes. Sometimes, he kills people in other ways.
Tucker specifically targets people who are usually not from the area and are people whom he thinks won’t be easily traced back to him. In the movie’s first scene, two tourist acquaintances named Heather (played by Ella Newton) and Greg (played by Liam Greinke) are on Tucker’s boat as new customers who were referred to by Dave. Greg and Heather are not a couple but met each other at the hostel where they’ve been staying, according to what they tell Tucker.
Heather is nervous about going underwater in the cage. Greg has to encourage her to do it. As soon as Tucker hears that Heather and Greg have not told anyone in their travel group that they’re on Tucker’s boat for this excursion, you just know that things will not end well for Heather and Greg.
Before the inevitable happens, Tucker shows Heather and Greg an old Gold Coast Herald newspaper clipping of when he was about 12 or 13 years old and was on the front page because he survived a shark attack. Tucker proudly show his shark bit scar that are on his midsection. As already shown in the movie trailer for “Dangerous Animals,” Tucker murders Greg by stabbing him. What happens to Heather is revealed later.
Meanwhile, an American drifter in her early-to-mid-20s has recently arrived on the Gold Coast to do some surfing because she’s passionate about surfing. Her name is Zephyr (played by Hassie Harrison), and she lives in her van. It’s eventually revealed in the movie that Zephyr has a troubled past of being in foster care when she was a kid. She also has a criminal record, mostly in juvenile detention.
Zephyr crosses paths with Moses Markley (played by Josh Heuston), who’s about the same age as Zephyr, when they are both at the same convenience store. Moses needs someone to jumpstart the battery of his car, which is in the parking lot of the real-estate office where he works. Moses is immediately attracted to Zephyr and flirts with her. She’s standoffish at first but she reluctantly agrees to help him with his car trouble.
On the surface, Zephyr and Moses have completely different lifestyles. Moses works in a 9-to-5 office job where he has to wear a suit and tie. Zephyr is unemployed and dresses like a surfer. Moses comes from an affluent family. Zephyr doesn’t have a family to call her own. Moses is open with his feelings. Zephyr is very guarded with her emotions.
But during their first conversation, Zephyr and Moses find out that they have a few things in common: They both love to surf. And they’re both fans of the 1960s rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival. Zephyr agrees to go on a date with Moses. They spend the night at his place after their first date.
The next morning, Moses is disappointed to see that Zephyr has left without saying goodbye. When he texts her, she says she left to catch some early-morning waves. Moses asks if he can join her later to surf, and she says yes. But before Moses can meet up with her at the beach, Tucker sees Zephyr alone in a deserted parking lot near the beach and kidnaps her.
The rest of “Dangerous Animals” shows what happens when Zephyr is in captivity and Moses’ frantic search to find her. The movie has a very uncomplicated plot, but there are many thrilling twists and turns. The kills in the movie are very gruesome, but that’s to be expected when some of the victims get mangled by sharks.
Harrison gives a very good performance as Zephyr, whose tough exterior covers up a lot of emotional pain. Courtney’s evil villain performance as Tucker is impactful, but the movie comes up short by not explaining why Tucker became a serial killer or anything else about his background besides the fact that he survived a shark attack as a boy. Even with some unanswered questions, “Dangerous Animals” is a straightforward horror movie that doesn’t pretend to be anything that it’s not. It delivers what’s expected and is an adrenaline-pumping and tense ride along the way.
Independent Film Company and Shudder will release “Dangerous Animals” in U.S. cinemas on June 6, 2025.
Directed by Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou (also known as The PhilippouBrothers)
Culture Representation: Taking place in South Australia, the horror film “Bring Her Back” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: Two orphaned teenagers end up living with a foster mother who has sinister intentions.
Culture Audience: “Bring Her Back” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the Philippou Brothers and horror movies that explore the dark sides of parenting.
Billy Barratt and Sora Wong in “Bring Her Back” (Photo by Ingvar Kenne/A24)
Unsettling and very gory, “Bring Her Back” is a foster care story from hell. Sally Hawkins gives a standout performance as a disturbed foster mother in this horror film that has some erratic and vague moments but remains compelling to watch. “Bring Her Back” is not as straightforward as the Philippou Brothers’ 2023 horror film “Talk to Me” (their excellent breakout feature-film debut as directors/screenwriters) and the ending of the movie gets a little messy and jumbled. However, there are some truly original and memorable images in the movie, which has above-average performances and plenty of suspense.
Directed by Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou (also known as The Philippou Brothers), Bring Her Back” was written by Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman. The movie takes place in an unnamed city in South Australia, where “Bring Her Back” was filmed on location in Adelaide. The movie blends supernatural horror with real-life horror that tackles issues of bullying and discrimination against people with disabilities.
“Bring Her Back” tells the story of step-siblings Andy (played by Billy Barratt) and Piper (played by Sora Wong), who become orphaned in the beginning of the story. Andy’s widower father was married to Piper’s mother. Piper is legally blind and can only see shapes and some light. Andy is 17, while Piper is about 15.
Piper is bullied and taunted by students at her school. Andy is very protective of her. One day, Andy’s father is found dead from a fall in the shower. Piper and Andy are placed in foster care in the house of a widow named Laura (played by Hawkins), who is a longtime social worker counselor and who is seemingly kind and nurturing. Andy’s plan is to apply for guardianship of Piper when he turns 18 in three months.
Laura isn’t as sunny and cheerful as she first appears. She’s grieving over the death of her blind daughter Cathy, who drowned in the house’s swimming pool. Laura is also the foster mother for a 10-year-old boy named Oliver (played by Jonah Wren Phillips), who is “selectively mute” and emotionally withdrawn. Laura is often impatient with Oliver and frequently keeps him locked in a room.
Laura immediately shows that she can be inappropriate and doesn’t respect privacy boundaries. Within a few hours of Laura meeting Andy, she expects him to tell her intimate details about his personal life and his inner thoughts. In another scene, while Andy is minding his own business and not doing anything wrong, Laura grabs his phone from him and looks at it without his permission. Later, she gives alcoholic drinks to Piper and Oliver for a party that they have for themselves in the house, and they all get drunk together.
A lot happens in “Bring Her Back” that cannot be described in a review or else it will spoil and reveal too much of the story. It’s enough to say that people need to have a strong tolerance for sickening scenes involving maiming and bloody injuries in order to watch all of “Bring Her Back.” Some questions remain unanswered by the end of the movie, but the intentions of the villain are abundantly clear and will leave a lasting impact on viewers.
A24 will release “Bring Her Back” in U.S. cinemas on May 30, 2025. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in U.S. cinemas on May 19, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on July 1, 2025.
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed city in Australia, the dramatic film “The Surfer” (a remake of the Telugu-language movie of the same name) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Asian people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: An Australian-born, American-raised businessman goes back to the Australian beach area where he spent part of his childhood so that he can go sufing, but he encounters a group of hostile, violent and terroritorial surfers who don’t want him to surf there.
Culture Audience: “The Surfer” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Nicolas Cage and suspenseful psychological thrillers where everything might not be what it seems.
Nicolas Cage and Julian McMahon in “The Surfer” (Photo courtesy of Roadside Attractions)
“The Surfer” evokes a moody fever dream where the protagonist is an unreliable narrator. This psychological thriller (about a man in conflict with a group of menacing surfers) is suspenseful but might be too weird or confusing for some viewers. It’s the type of movie that has enough to hold viewers’ interest, even if the ending of the film could be considered divisive.
Directed by Lorcan Finnegan and written by Thomas Martin, “The Surfer” had its world premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. The movie subsequently made the rounds at several other film festivals, including the 2024 BFI London Film Festival and the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival. “The Surfer” takes place in an unnamed city in Western Australia and was actually filmed in Yallingup, Australia.
“The Surfer” is a movie inspired by a mix of fact and fiction. In “The Surfer” production notes, Martin says he got inspiration for the screenplay from Australian writer Robert Drewe’s short stories; John Cheever’s 1964 short story “The Swimmer”; and the 1968 “The Swimmer” film adaptation, starring Burt Lancaster. “The Surfer” is also based on the true crime stories about the real-life surfing gang the Bay Boys, who were headquartered in Palos Verdes, California, and caused terror throughout the 1970s.
“The Surfer” begins by showing an unnamed businessman (played by Nicolas Cage) parked in a car with his teenage son Charlie (played by Finn Little) at Luna Bay, a beach area where this father spent the earliest years of his childhood. The man (who is identified only as The Surfer in the movie’s end credits) speaks reverentially about surfing and how it can teach important life lessons. This is the first time that The Surfer has brought Charlie (who is about 15 or 16 and is identified only as The Kid in the movie’s end credits) to Luna Bay, which The Surfer considers to be a very special place.
The Surfer wants to spend some time surfing with Charlie at Luna Bay. Charlie is not so enthusiastic and wonders out loud why his father told him to skip school for this excursion. The Surfer is in the area because the Lunda Bay house where he spent the earliest years of his childhood is now up for sale. The Surfer is obsessed with buying this house because it’s the last connection that he has to his father, who died when The Surfer was a boy.
Observant viewers will immediately notice that The Surfer has an American accent, while his son Charlie has an Australian accent. It’s explained later in the movie that The Surfer was born in Australia, but he and his mother moved to California after his father died. Charlie’s mother Helen (played by Patsy Knapp and voiced by Brenda Meaney) also has an American accent, which implies that The Surfer and Helen met in the United States but have been raising Charlie in Australia.
The Surfer and Helen have been separated for an untold period of time and are headed for a divorce. In a phone conversation shown later in the movie, Helen urgently asks The Surfer to sign the divorce papers because Helen wants to marry her boyfriend Derek, who is not seen or heard in the movie. Helen has another announcement for The Surfer that isn’t surprising because of how she wants this divorce to be final as quickly as possible.
The first indication that Luna Bay is an unfriendly place to strangers is when a man named Pitbull (played by Alexander Bertrand) brushes past The Surfer and snarls, “Fuck off,” even though The Surfer wasn’t bothering anyone. Just as The Surfer and Charlie are about to hit the waves on their surfboards, they are approached by hostile surfer known only as Blondie (played by Rory O’Keeffe), who gruffly says to these two out-of-town strangers: “Don’t live here, don’t surf here.”
It’s eventually revealed that Blondie is part of a Luna Bay all-male surfing gang called the Bay Boys. The gang’s leader is a wealthy heir named Scott” Scally” Callahan (played by Julian McMahon), who comes across as charming but it’s a mask for his true vicious personality. The Bay Boy gang members are extremely territorial about the beach and will instigate violent attacks on anyone who defies their orders to not surf at the beach. Scally runs the gang like a toxic fraternity, including having macho rituals, dangerous hazing initiations, and rowdy parties with plenty of alcohol and drugs.
Someone who’s a lot friendlier to The Surfer is an unnamed elderly homeless man (played by Nic Cassim), who is identified in the end credits only as The Bum. The Surfer and The Bum establish a rapport, partly because The Bum reminds The Surfer of The Surfer’s father. The Surfer also meets a friendly unnamed photographer (played by Miranda Tapsel) on the beach and has a brief conversation with her where he reveals that when he was young, he spent a number of years being as a surfer and travelogue writer
Someone who isn’t helpful at all (and is on the Bay Boys’ side) is an unnamed local cop (played by Justin Rosniak), who is called to the scene when The Surfer phones in a complaint about the Bay Boys assaulting The Surfer and stealing The Surfer’s surfboard. The cop does nothing about these crimes because he says that Scally’s family is too rich and influential. The corrupt cop also confirms Scally’s lie that the Bay Boys have had the surfboard on display at their beach shack for months. It’s also revealed that several local residents enable and excuse the Bay Boys’ reign of terror.
During this conflict with the Bay Boys, The Surfer becomes increasingly stressed-out about the sale of his childhood house. Early in the movie, the estate agent Mike (played by Rahel Romahn) told The Surfer in a phone conversation that a family has offered a better deal buy the house and pay $1.7 million in cash. The Surfer had made an offer to pay $1.6 million for the house and pleads for more time to match the other potential buyer’s offer. Mike gives Ther Surfer an extra two days to come up with the additional $100,000. Meanwhile, his mortgage broker (voiced by Greg McNeill) tells The Surfer that The Surfer’s credit is stretched to the limit.
It’s never stated what The Surfer does for a living, but he’s a businessman who has clients. He also seems to be successful because he drives a Lexus. But there are signs that The Surfer’s mental health has been unraveling, and his job could be in jeopardy. The Surfer has taken a personal day off from work to spend time with Charlie at Luna Bay on a day that The Surfer should have been in business meetings. A phone conversation with an office colleague reveals that The Surfer wasn’t wearing shoes and socks at a recent client meeting.
As the tension and anger start to build and boil over between The Surfer and the Bay Boys, some other things go wrong for The Surfer. In between, he has dream-like memories of his childhood. The movie’s cinematography is excellent at creating a retro idyllic glow to these scenes that seep into the story when The Surfer wants some escapism from his harsh reality. At several points in the movie, viewers might be asking, “Where is this story going?” How much you will enjoy “The Surfer” will depend on your curiosity to see how the movie ends.
Cage is known for playing a long list of eccentric characters. In “The Surfer,” he does an admirable job of not playing this character as too over-the-top (which is a major criticism that Cage has gotten for his recent performances) but as someone who has sides to himself that are not immediately apparent. McMahon also stands out as the villainous Scally, although there’s nothing complex about this evil character.
Looking beyond the obvious crime thriller aspects of the story, “The Surfer” also has subtle commentary about how outward appearances can be deceiving, when it come to who can be trusted as honest and credible. The Bum is often dismissed by people who think he’s mentally ill and worthless because of his physical appearance and his poverty, but he is a truth teller. That’s in contrast to The Surfer, who has the image of being a respectable businessman, but he could be telling lies to himself and to other people. “The Surfer” might disappoint some viewers looking for a straightforward and predictable story, but this film is actually an artistic depiction of how memories (good and bad) can shape someone’s reality in the past and present.
Roadside Attractions and Lionsgate released “The Surfer” in U.S. cinemas on May 2, 2025. The movie will be released in Australia on May 15, 2025.
Culture Representation: Taking place in the Australian Outback fictional town of Limbo, the dramatic film “Limbo” features a cast of white and First Nations/indigenous characters representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A police detective travels from an unnamed Australian city to Limbo to review a cold case about a teenager who disappeared from Limbo 20 years ago.
Culture Audience: “Limbo” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Simon Baker and well-made, “slow burn” crime dramas about missing people and fractured families.
Pictured from left to right: Simon Baker, Andrew Dingaman and Rob Collins in “Limbo” (Photo courtesy of Brainstorm Media and Music Box Films)
The spellbinding and atmospheric crime drama “Limbo” moves at a pace that might be too slow for some viewers. But beneath this unhurried tone are simmering tensions and resentments over racism and generational trauma. Viewers expecting a format that’s similar to a TV series crime procedural will be disappointed by “Limbo,” which offers no easy answers to the mystery at the center of the story. However, by the end of the film, there is at least one outcome that shows the reality of how people can expect one thing and end up getting something else.
Ivan Sen is the chief creative force of “Limbo,” since he is the movie’s director, writer, cinematographer, editor, composer, colorist and visual effects supervisor. He is also one of the movie’s producers. “Limbo” had its world premiere at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival and made the rounds at other film festivals that year, including the Toronto International Film Festival. “Limbo” earned three nominations for the 2024 Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) Awards—Best Indie Film, Best Lead Actor (for Simon Baker) and Best Supporting Actor (for Rob Collins)—and won the prize for Best Indie Film.
“Limbo” takes place in the Australian Outback fictional town of Limbo, but the movie was actually filmed in Coober Pedy, Australia, whose main industries are mining and tourism. “Limbo” was filmed in black and white, which makes the desert atmosphere look even more stark and at times even more foreboding than if the movie had been in color. In this remote area depicted in “Limbo,” feels of isolation and stagnation seep into the tone of the movie as well as the character performances.
“Limbo” begins with the arrival of police detective Travis Hurley (played by Baker), who drives into Limbo and stays at the only motel in town: the Limbo Motel. It’s an unusual motel because it’s partially inside a cave. (Several of “Limbo’s” scenes take place inside or near caves.) Therefore, Travis’ room looks like a cave room.
Travis is in Limbo for a few days to review the missing person case of Charlotte Hayes, a First Nations/indigneous person who lived in Limbo and who disappeared when she was a teenager 20 years ago. The case has gone cold, but Travis has been assigned to investigate the case and to find out if there are any new clues that can be uncovered. During his investigation, Travis gets more emotionally involved with Charlotte’s family than he expected when he first arrived in town.
Viewers soon find out that Travis is not a squeaky-clean police officer. One of the first things that he does when he goes in his motel room is melt an unnamed opioid powder in a spoon and shoot up the substance in his arm with a hypodermic needle. Most people will assume that the drug is heroin or Fentanyl, based on how Travis has a “nodding out” reaction after injecting this drug.
Travis’ drug addiction is not mentioned or shown again in the movie, until he has a private conversation with someone where he confesses that he uses drugs. It’s during this conversation that Travis also mentions that he was formerly an undercover narcotics officer and used drugs as part of this job. It’s unknown if he got hooked on drugs directly because of his narcotics officer job or if he had already been addicted. However, what’s clear is that his drug addiction is a secret from almost everyone Travis knows. He tells the person he confesses this secret to that this is the first time Travis has told anyone that he currently uses drugs.
Most of “Limbo” shows Travis doing interviews with Charlotte’s family members and other potential witnesses. The people he spends the most time with are Charlotte’s older stepbrother Charlie (played by Collins) and Charlie’s sister Emma (played by Natasha Wanganeen), who is a single mother raising three kids. The parents of Charlotte, Charlie and Emma are all deceased.
The family is still haunted by Charlotte’s disappearance and have become disillusioned about ever finding out what happened to her because police have treated cases of missing indigenous people as inferior to cases of missing white people. The indigenous people in the area call themselves “black” people. Charlie tells Travis that in Charlotte’s missing person case, police delayed investigating until a week after Charlotte disappeared. Charlie and Emma believe that if Charlotte had been white, police would have investigated Charlotte’s disappearance immediately.
Two of the children whom Emma is raising are actually Charlie’s biological kids: rebellious and sullen son Zac (played by Marc Coe) is about 12 or 13 years old, while cheeky and inquisitive daughter Ava (played by Tiana Hartwig) is about 9 or 10 years old. Emma’s biological daughter Jessie (played by Alexis Lennon), who is about 11 or 12 years old, has an absentee father, and she is often bluntly rude and brutally honest. For example, Jessie tells Travis that he looks like a drug dealer instead of a cop.
Charlie is a bachelor who lives alone. Why is Emma taking care of Charlie’s children? The movie doesn’t mention what happened to the mother(s) of Zac and Ava, but Emma tells Travis that Charlie had some type of guilt-ridden mental breakdown after Charlotte disappeared. For a while, Charlie was under suspicion for Charlotte’s disappearance, but he insists that he was falsely accused by two local indigenous men, one of whom had a personal grudge against Charlie. Charlie says he was at a cousin’s house when Charlotte disappeared. Charlie has been estranged from his children for years and doesn’t talk to them, but he will often drive by in his truck and look at his children, and then drive away.
As Travis continues his investigation, he hears more about the racial divide in Limbo. This racial tension doesn’t surprise Travis, but he sees firsthand how this racism can affect people’s lives and attitudes. Charlie is very suspicious of Travis when they first meet each other and says to Travis, “I don’t talk to cops, especially white ones.” However, Charlie eventually opens up to Travis when he sees that Travis is the Hayes family’s best chance of getting Charlotte’s case investigated. Emma is also wary of Travis at first (but she’s not as openly hostile as Charlie is), and she eventually agrees to be interviewed by Travis too, which she does separately from Charlie.
During interviews and conversations between Charlie and Travis, Charlie sometimes bitterly complains about how indigenous people are unfairly targeted by white law enforcement officers, who are quick to harass or arrest indigenous people for the same things that police officers excuse or ignore if white people do these things. There’s a scene where Travis and Charlie are talking outside while Charlie is drinking a beer. A police car drives by them and doesn’t stop. Charlie says to Travis: “Usually, they tell you to move along [for] drinking on the street like this.” Charlie tells Travis why he thinks the police inside the car didn’t stop to reprimand Charlie: “Maybe because of you.” In other words, Charlie is saying that Travis has white privilege.
Throughout the investigation, Travis keeps hearing about a white man named Leon, whom Charlie and Emma believe is the most likely suspect in Charlotte’s disappearance. Leon had a reputation in the area for hosting parties for young people, who got alcohol and maybe other drugs illegally from him. Leon seemed especially fixated on indigenous teenage girls. Leon had a green Ford Laser at the time of Charlotte’s disappearance. What happened to that car is revealed in the movie.
Travis finds out soon after he arrives in Limbo that Leon died of dementia the year before. Leon’s elderly brother Joseph (played by Nicholas Hope), who is a heavy drinker and is in obvious ill health, tells Travis about Leon dying and also shows Leon’s unmarked grave to Travis. Leon’s photo is never seen in movie, but it’s implied that Leon was close to the same age as Joseph, so Leon was most likely a middle-aged man when Charlotte disappeared. Travis also listens to audio recordings of interviews that police did separately with Charlie and Leon, who also denied anything to do with Charlotte’s disappearance.
As Charlie begins to cooperate more with Travis, Charlie points Travis in the direction of more potential witnesses in the First Nations/indigenous community. A middle-aged man named Stoney (played by Andrew Digaman), who is very suspicious of police, told Charlie that years ago in a pub, Leon once made a drunken confession to Stoney that Leon killed an unnamed person. Oscar Porter (played by Joshua Warrior), who had a personal feud with Charlie that involved at least one physical brawl, was one of the men who accused Charlie of having something to do with Charlotte’s disappearance. Travis finds out that Oscar’s accusation was because of something other than a personal vendetta against Charlie.
Because Travis is only in town for a few days, and he is the only investigating officer for this cold case review, the chances are very slim that Travis will solve this case in such a short period of time. However, there is enough revealed in the story for viewers to put together the pieces of this puzzle, as certain conclusions can be made, based on what Travis and other people discover. Viewers will have to look for visual clues, as well as consider things that are said and the credibility of the people saying these things.
It’s not revealed right away, but Travis is a divorced father who is no longer in contact with his only child (a son) because his ex-wife remarried, and his son likes his stepfather more than he likes Travis. When Travis tells Emma about his family situation, he describes it as bowing out of his son’s life, but you get the feeling that there’s more to the story that Travis isn’t telling, especially since his drug addiction undoubtedly affects all aspects of his life. “Limbo” doesn’t go too deep into Travis’ personal history, but this information about being estranged from his son is enough to see why Travis is emotionally touched by Charlie’s estrangement from his own children—especially with Zac, who feels abandoned by Charlie and is very angry at Charlie.
Emma makes a confession to Travis about something that happened in her past. This confession shows that Charlie isn’t the only one who feels guilty about Charlotte’s disappearance. Baker, Collins and Wanganeen give admirable performances as three damaged but not completely broken people who are doing what they can to ease some of their pain and hopefully heal. By the end of the movie, viewers will care not just about the “whodunit” aspect of the story but will also be concerned about the well-being of these characters.
“Limbo” is the name of the movie and the name of the fictional town in the movie, but it also describes the tragic state of mind that loved ones of missing people feel when they don’t know what happened to their loved ones who disappeared. Travis sees the trauma that this case has brought onto the Hayes family, so it makes him confront certain issues in his own life. The way that Travis reacts doesn’t make his problems go away but it might give him a little bit of redemption. “Limbo” is a solemn and meaningful reminder that when people talk about a system that fails, there are untold numbers of people who get hurt and might never recover.
Brainstorm Media and Music Box Films released “Limbo” in select U.S. cinemas on March 22, 2024. The movie was released in Australia and part of Europe in 2023.
Culture Representation: Taking place in South Australia, the dramatic film “The Royal Hotel” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Aboriginal people and one Asian) portraying the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: Two young female tourists from Canada take a live-in bartending job at a shabby and sordid pub in a remote, male-dominated mining town, and they experience various levels of danger and harassment.
Culture Audience: “The Royal Hotel” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Julia Garner and movies about subtle and not-so-subtle sexual tensions and power-based dynamics between men and women.
Ursula Yovich and Hugo Weaving in “The Royal Hotel” (Photo courtesy of Neon)
“The Royal Hotel” is a realistic observation of how two female friends can have very different reactions to being in the same male-dominated environment. Despite a few story flaws, the movie accurately shows how people try to dismiss harassment as “joking.” “The Royal Hotel” had its world premiere at the 2023 Telluride Film Festival and its Canadian premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.
Written and directed by Kitty Green, “The Royal Hotel” touches on many of the same themes that are in Green’s 2020 film “The Assistant.” Both movies are about how women navigate in an enviroment where men have almost all of the power, and most of the men in that environment abuse that power through misogynistic harassment or violence. Julia Garner stars in both movies.
“The Assistant” is based partially on real-life experiences of administrative assistants of Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced entertainment mogul who became a convicted and imprisoned rapist. “The Royal Hotel” is also inspired by real events: The movie is based on the 2017 Australian documentary “Hotel Coolgardie,” which is about two young Scandanavian women who became trapped in a remote mining town in Australia.
That’s what happens to Canadian tourists Hanna (played by Garner) and Liv (played by Jessica Henwick), who are best friends leading a nomadic existence. Hanna (the responsible and cautious friend) and Liv (the free-spirited and spontaneous friend) aren’t really on vacation, but they don’t have any immediate plans to go back to Canada. They both like to party, but Hanna doesn’t drink alcohol. It’s later revealed that Hanna’s mother abused alcohol when Hanna was a child.
In the beginning of the movie, Hanna and Liv are partying at a nightclub somewhere in Australia when Liv discovers (after her credit card is declined) that they have run out of money. Hanna and Liv are in a work/travel program that helps people find temporary jobs in places where they are visiting. It’s never made clear in the movie how long Hanna and Liv have been living this way.
At an office appointment, an unnamed woman (played by Bree Bai), who works for this program, informs Liv and Hanna that the only immediate job opening available is a bartending gig at a pub in a converted hotel in a remote mining town in Australia. This office worker tells Liv and Hanna that the job, which includes free lodging for the pub employees, involves a lot of “male attention,” because most of the people who live in this area are men. The office employee describes the job as something that attracts a lot of young women. She tries to make it sound like it would be adventurous to work there.
From the beginning, Hanna feels uneasy about this job offer and is reluctant to take the job because she thinks it might be dangerous. Liv doesn’t have any of those concerns and asks out of curiosity about this remote location: “Will there be kangaroos?” Because they are desperate for money, Hanna and Liv accept this job offer. It’s a decision that they will later regret.
Because Hanna and Liv can’t afford to have their own car in their current circumstances, the pub’s manager Carol (played by Ursula Yovich) gives a car ride to Hanna and Liv to this unnamed, desolate town in South Australia. (“The Royal Hotel” was filmed on location in South Australia.) At first, Carol has a gruff and unfriendly attitude toward the two pals. The pub is located in a shabby place that used to be known as the Royal Hotel. Hanna and Liv plan to live and work there for only a few weeks to make enough money to go back to their carefree lifestyle of partying while traveling.
Hanna and Liv will be replacing two other young women: Jules (played by Alex Malone) and Cassie (played by Kate Cheel), who are close friends and originally from Great Britain. Jules and Cassie are “party girls” too, but Jules is more talkative and more extroverted than Cassie. Hanna and Liv first meet Jules and Cassie in the living room of the messy suite area where Hanna and Liv will be staying. Cassie and Jules are startled out of a drunken stupor when Hanna and Liv arrive. Jules laughs when Hanna and Liv ask if this place has WiFi, because there is no WiFi service in this area. Cell phone service is also spotty and rare.
During the course of the movie, Hanna and Liv are targets of hostile sexism from men who are used to getting away with it. However, Hanna and Liv react differently. Hanna thinks it’s offensive and often isn’t afraid to say so. Liv makes excuses and says it’s just part of the “culture” where they are. “The Royal Hotel” has many examples of how women can often be unwitting or deliberate allies and enablers to sexists who want to treat women as inferior to men, thereby helping perpetuate this vicious cycle.
The warning signs about this awful job are obvious from the beginning, when Hanna and Liv first meet Billy (played by Hugo Weaving), the disheveled owner of this struggling business. The shower that Hanna and Liv have to use isn’t working properly, so Billy (who is in his 60s) angrily storms into the room to fix it, and he strikes up a conversation with his two new employees. During this conversation, Hanna mentions that she can speak some Spanish and Portuguese. In response, Billy calls Hanna a “smart cunt,” in a tone of voice that makes it clear that he thinks Hanna is being uppity. Hanna is so shocked by this insult from her new boss, she doesn’t say anything to him about it.
Hanna and Liv know nothing about bartending, so Billy has to train them. Hanna figures out very quickly that she and Liv (and the other young female employees before them) were only hired to be objectified by horny male customers. Liv knows it too, but she doesn’t seem to care, because she thinks they can have a good time anyway. Liv often scolds Hanna for being too “uptight” over the increasingly alarming and hostile actions that the two women get from some of the customers. Liv convinces Hanna to stay just a few weeks so they can make enough money to go to Australia’s Bondi Beach.
The pub’s customers consist mostly of men in their 20s, 30s and 40s. The vast majority of them work in a nearby mine. One of the rare women in the pub is a regular customer named Glenda (played by Barbara Lowing), who is about the same age as Billy. Glenda, who is often drunk, craves attention from the men in the pub, where the atmosphere (not surprisingly) is often rowdy and vulgar. Glenda has an outdated and harmful attitude that men should be allowed to get away with sexual harassment just because they’re men.
On the last night before Cassie and Jess leave the area, they both get very drunk and dance on the pub’s countertop, much to the delight of the male customers. At one point, Cassie and Jess (who are both wearing skirts) lift up their clothes to flash their naked private parts on their upper and lower bodies. The two women don’t want to be groped in their private parts and have to fight off the men who try to commit this sexual assault, which is excused as “drunken antics.” Liv smirks when she quips to a horrified Hanna: “That will be us in a few weeks.”
One of the young male customers named Matty (played by Toby Wallace) plays a prank on Liv by telling her that he wants a drink called Dickens Cider. Liv says she’s never heard of that drink. It takes Liv (who’s not as street smart as she thinks she is) a few minutes to figure out that Dickens Cider is not a real drink but a pun for “dick inside her.” Liv laughs off the joke, while Hanna doesn’t think it’s so funny.
It soon becomes apparent that Matty is attracted to Hanna. In an effort to impress Hanna (who rebuffs his advances), Matty eventually says he’s sorry for his crude prank. Matty can see that Hanna is repulsed by a lot of what she sees in the pub, so he quickly switches gears and tries to give the impression that he’s the “nice guy” in the group. Meanwhile, another young customer named Teeth (played by James Frecheville), who is often teased by the men for being socially awkward, develops a crush on Liv.
And in a sleazy place like this pub, there’s always at least one creep who gives the impression that he’s just one drink away from committing rape. In this pub, this cretin is Dolly (played by Daniel Henshall), a hate-filled loner who likes to bully and harass people for no reason. Dolly will get no sympathy from “The Royal Hotel” viewers when they see what he does.
It would be very easy for any outside observer to say, “Why don’t Hanna and Liv just leave?” It’s not that simple. Hanna and Liv have no money and no means of transportation (the nearest public transportation is too far away to walk), so unless they can find someone in this land of strangers to drive them out of this hellish place for free, they’re out of luck. Carol won’t help because she needs Hanna and Liv to stay as bartenders for the pub.
All Hanna and Liv have to do is get paid and then use the money to leave, right? Wrong. After a while, Hanna and Liv find out that Billy is an alcoholic who hasn’t been paying anyone to whom he owes money. A local vendor named Tommy (played by Baykali Ganambarr), who delivers food and drinks to the pub, hasn’t been paid by Billy for the past three months. Billy owes Tommy $4,300. And eventually, Hanna and Liv see that Billy has no intention of paying them either.
Billy isn’t doing anything to help his failing business. There’s a scene where the phone rings in the nearly empty pub. Billy picks up the phone, and without even finding out who’s calling and why, he rudely shouts, “We’re busy!” And then he abruptly hangs up the phone. Through conversations, it’s revealed that Billy inherited and ruined this once-thriving family business, which was started by his paternal grandfather.
And where is Carol during all of this mess? Carol, who is Billy’s lover, keeps mostly to herself in the small trailer where they live next to the pub. It’s never really explained why Billy and Carol live in a trailer when there are plenty of rooms in this former hotel. However, considering how run-down the place is and how some of the equipment keeps malfunctioning (with unreliable Billy being the only repair person), it can be assumed that most of the rooms in this place are uninhabitable. Carol has a no-nonsense attitude and isn’t as terrible as she first appears to be.
Unfortunately, the trailer for “The Royal Hotel” shows too much of what happens in the movie, even if these spoiler details are just brief glimpses in a quick-cutting montage. Viewers will probably enjoy “The Royal Hotel” more if they haven’t seen the movie’s trailer first. Regardless of how much people know about this movie before seeing it, the acting throughout is above-average and makes this movie worth watching.
Garner and Henwick give riveting performances as two friends who find their loyalties to each other tested by their contrasting attitudes toward misogynistic sexism. The movie also has very authentic depictions of how sexual harassers and horrible bosses often test the boundaries of what they can get away with and go further past those boundaries if they aren’t stopped. Hanna (who is obviously the story’s hero) finds out that she has more courage and inner strength than she originally thought she did.
“The Royal Hotel” is not without its flaws. In the last third of the movie, someone suddenly makes an appearance that doesn’t really ring true. It looks a little too contrived. The movie also doesn’t do a very good job of explaining Liv’s background and why she puts up with so much blatant and unacceptable harassment. There’s a slight hint that Liv is running away from something traumatic when she’s asked by a customer how she ended up in this remote place, and Liv replies that it’s because it’s far away from where she used to live.
Hanna’s background is also vague. The only information that viewers will learn about her past is that she grew up with a mother who was probably an alcoholic (even though Hanna denies that her mother’s drinking problem was that serious), and Hanna studied business and marketing while she was in college. It’s also never really made clear how long Hanna and Liv have been friends. However, Hanna and Liv certainly find out what kind of friendship they have in these tough circumstances.
Overall, “The Royal Hotel” is a capably written and skillfully directed movie that shows how victims can be trapped in horrendous situations where the people who could help them are the same people who don’t want the trapped victims to leave. The movie also serves as a warning that abuse is abuse and should not be dismissed as “gray areas” or “blurred lines.” “The Royal Hotel” can keep viewers guessing about what will happen next, but by the end of the movie, there should be no uncertainty about who and what caused the worst problems.
Neon will release “The Royal Hotel” in select U.S. cinemas on October 6, 2023.
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed city in Australia, the horror film “Talk to Me” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some black people) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A teenage girl, who is grieving over the unexpected death of her mother, joins some of the students from her high school in a party ritual where they can alter their consciousness by summoning up dangerous spirits that can possess bodies, but then things go very wrong.
Culture Audience: “Talk to Me” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching a terrifying and gruesome horror movie with a suspenseful story and good acting.
Alexandria Steffensen and Sophie Wilde in “Talk to Me” (Photo courtesy of A24)
“Talk to Me” is a genuinely creepy horror movie with some disturbing images that aren’t easily forgotten. The last 15 minutes are rushed and could have been explained better, but most viewers should understand the effective ending. The movie explores themes of regret and grief during supernatural chaos. “Talk to Me” had its world premiere at the 2022 Adelaide Film Festival and its North American premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.
Directed by brothers Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou, “Talk to Me” is their feature-film directorial debut. “Talk to Me” takes place in an unnamed city in Australia (the nation where the movie was filmed), but the movie’s story could take place in any country or culture where teenagers are always looking for new ways to get thrills from partying. From the movie’s opening scene, “Talk to Me” shows that there’s a menacing danger lurking for the partying teens in the story. Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman co-wrote the “Talk to Me” screenplay.
The first scene in the movie shows a guy in his late teens named Cole (played by Ari McCarthy) frantically looking for his younger brother Duckett (played by Sunny Johnson) at a crowded house party where the only people there are teenagers. Cole breaks down a bedroom door to find a shirtless Duckett in a daze and sitting on a bed. Duckett’s back is facing Cole. There are noticeable bloody scratches on Duckett’s back.
Duckett is rambling and disoriented as Cole leads him out of the room to go outside and to be taken home. Is Duckett on drugs, is he mentally ill, or both? All of a sudden, Duckett takes out a knife and stabs Cole but doesn’t kill him. And then, Duckett takes out a gun and shoots himself in front of the partygoers. What happened to Cole and Duckett are shown later in the movie.
Meanwhile, at a nearby high school, where most of the students are middle-class, the students have been buzzing about a new way to get high that they don’t want adults to know about at all. Two of the students—a tall, rebellious type named Joss (played by Chris Alosio) and a smirking, androgynous type named Hayley (played by Zoe Terakes)—have come into the possession of an embalmed forearm with mysterious writing all over it. Joss and Hayley are the ringleaders of bringing this forearm to teenage parties to show off as an unexplained “magic trick.”
The word is out that people who go through an occult-like ritual while grasping the arm’s hand will be temporarily possessed by unknown spirits and will experience a high like no other. First, the person holding the hand has to say, “Talk to me,” and then utter, “I let you in.” Students at the school have been video recording these incidents on their phones. These videos have gone viral among the students. The people who look possessed in these videos speak in voices that are not their own, they convulse, their eyes turn black, their faces becomes blotched with strained blood vessels, and they look as if they’ve lost their minds.
The people whose bodies are possessed are also able to see spirits in the room during the possession—and these spirits usually look like rotting corpses. People won’t know in advance if the spirit conjured up will be good or evil. But somehow, Joss and Hayley know that whatever spirit takes possession of people’s bodies cannot stay in that body for more than 90 seconds, or else the spirit will want to permanently stay. As soon as this information is revealed in the movie (the info is also in the “Talk to Me” trailers), it’s easy to figure out what happened to Duckett in the movie’s opening scene. Who will be the next victim of any menacing spirits?
“Talk to Me” focuses on four teenagers who find themselves getting caught up in the mayhem and suffering the consequences. The main protagonist is Mia (played by Sophie Wilde), who’s about 16 or 17 years old. Mia is grieving over the unexpected death of her mother Rhea (played by Alexandria Steffensen), who died one year earlier under mysterious circumstances. Mia’s father Max (played by Marcus Johnson) found Rhea dead in a bathroom at the family home.
The death has been ruled an accident, but Mia has unspoken and probably unfair resentment toward her father for not being there in time to save Rhea. As a result of these hard feelings, Mia barely speaks to he father. Mia also spends as much time away from her house as possible. Mia can usually be found at the house of her best friend Jade (played by Alexandra Jensen), who has known Mia for years.
Jade and Mia do a lot of things that teenage girls do as friends. Mia is much more of a misfit at school than Jade is. Although they are best friends, Mia and Jade have a bit of underlying tension between them because Jade’s boyfriend Daniel (played by Otis Dhanji) is someone whom Mia had a crush on not too long ago. Nothing ever came of this crush except a quick kiss that Mia planted on Daniel, who let her know that he wasn’t interested in dating her.
Daniel and Jade have been dating each other for the past three months. Mia is very surprised when Jade tells her that Daniel and Jade haven’t even kissed yet. However, Mia’s facial experession and body language when she hears this news indicate that she’s secretly pleased that Daniel and Jade haven’t had the intimacy of kissing. The lack of kissing in Daniel and Jade’s relationship later serves as a contrast to one of the most unsettling scenes in the movie. It’s a scene that’s intended to make viewers uncomfortable. Some viewers will be shocked and disgusted.
Rounding out this tight-knight quartet of teens is Jade’s brother Riley (played by Joe Bird), who is 14 years old. Jade sometimes treats Riley like a pest, but Mia (who is an only child) likes hanging out with Riley, whom she treats almost like a younger brother. Riley and Jade live with their divorced mother Sue (played by Miranda Otto), who is always suspicious about Jade and Mia being up to no good. Sue’s suspicion is used as comic relief in “Talk to Me,” which has a lot of dark and horrific moments.
You can almost do a countdown to the scene when Sue will be away from home for a night, and Jade throws a house party with no adult supervision. Needless to say (because it’s already shown in the movie’s trailers), Mia and Riley end up doing the “Talk to Me” ritual on separate occassions. Mia did the ritual under peer pressure but then found herself wanting to know more when she saw visions of her mother’s spirit talking to her. Riley wanted to do the ritual to impress the older teens.
Sensitive viewers should be warned that “Talk to Me” is not for anyone who gets easily squeamish by the sight of blood. There are multiple scenes in the movie where someone repeatedly bashes that person’s own head on hard surfaces, in attempts to commit suicide. The sound effects in these head-bashing scenes are just as nauseauting as all the blood. The same suicidal person also tries to pull that person’s own right eye out of its socket.
“Talk to Me” works so well as a compelling horror movie because the filmmakers wisely chose to center the movie on teenagers—the age group most likely to want to indulge in these dangerous rituals just to be rebellious, even if the consequences could be deadly. The movie adds an extra layer of authenticity in wanting to take these risks when the motive (in Mia’s case) is to see and communicate with a loved one from the spirit world. Wilde’s richly textured performance is what holds “Talk to Me” together when some of the loose threads in the plot threaten to unravel the movie.
The movie comes very close to falling apart toward the end with a flurry of activities that seem like ways to cover up some crucial unanswered questions. The origin of this forearm remains vague (there’s speculation among the teens that it’s the forearm of an unknown serial killer), yet somehow Joss and Hayley seem to know all the “rules” of this forearm. It’s hastily explained that Joss got this forearm from a couple of strangers at a party, and these strangers supposedly told him what to do with the arm.
The subplot over Rhea’s death is also somewhat mishandled. The movie casts doubts over whether her death was really an accident. But based on the injuries that Rhea sustained, a required autopsy would’ve given more clarity. Mia doesn’t have all the details of her mother’s death, but the movie implies that she doesn’t want to know all the details, until she’s prompted to ask her father more questions. “Talk to Me” does a good job of showing that Mia’s grief clouds her judgment. Is that ghost of her mother really her mother, or is it something else disguised as her mother?
Although the “Talk to Me” screenplay isn’t perfect, the movie delivers in serving up plenty of scares and scenarios that will keep viewers riveted, even if what’s on screen might be too sickening for some people’s tastes. Don’t expect “Talk to Me” to be the type of horror movie where all the mysteries are solved by the end. However, “Talk to Me” is definitely the type of horror flick where it’s obvious by the end that this movie was made to have a sequel or a series.
A24 released “Talk to Me” in U.S. cinemas on July 28, 2023.
