Based on the 1967 novel of the same name by Joan Lindsay, 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' is a wonderfully evocative mood piece. an existential horror movie ably directed by Peter Weir ('Witness', 'Dead Poet Society', 'Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World'). It is 1900 and a group of twenty or so students from a women's finishing school in rural Australia are accompanied by two teachers and a carriage driver on a Valentines Day picnic at a nearby geological attraction known as 'Hanging Rock'. Three of those students and the teacher that went looking for them after they wandered off disappear, without a trace. Search parties are organized but they appear to have simply vanished off the face of the Earth.
The bizarre uncertainty of the whole thing rock the school and nearby community to their core, emotionally destroying almost everybody. The film that it reminded me of most was Roman Polanski's 'Repulsion' which also also has an incessant feeling of dread and foreboding throughout. Both films are not what you would traditionally call a horror film, there are not monsters human or otherwise just an overwhelming psychic sense of something being extremely wrong. I was absolutely blown away, possibly the best film I've seen this year. ****
No comments:
Post a Comment