The Australian film industry’s obsession with 'glass-half-empty’ stories continues unchecked with director Jon Hewitt’s nasty serial-killer thriller, Acolytes.
Though well-crafted, the film is a sordid, occasionally-repugnant tale of three teenagers who inadvertently discover the identity of a sadistic killer terrorising the backstreets of Brisbane’s suburbs, preying on young women caught unawares. With teen cockiness and neighbourhood angst fuelling their fantasies of retribution, the friends (Joshua Payne, Hannah Mangan-Lawrence and Sebastian Gregory), set in motion a plan to corner the murderer and bring peace to the 'burb and fame to their names.
Hewitt’s camera lingers long over the tortured victims, the scenes of corpse disposal (playing on 'shallow woodland grave’ clichés, no doubt inspired by the horror of the Belanglo State Forest murders) and the extended, blood-soaked ending. What he fails to do is apply the same sense of realism to the script and dialogue, which trades in stereotypes and relies on coincidence – The Hardy Boys-meets-Silence Of The Lambs. It also half-heartedly paints the darkside of suburbia in a far less affective manner than films like Blue Velvet and American Beauty, pitting the many different residents of this 'typical’ satellite-suburb against each other in an all-too-obvious attempt at social commentary within a genre piece.
There is some worth to the film. Joel Edgerton’s psychopath, Ian Wright, is never less than interesting, delving into some deeply disturbing character traits that make him unpredictable at best, sickeningly cruel at worst. That Edgerton fails to create a classic villain is the fault of the script, which steadfastly refuses to shade the villain in any other colour but black – his speech oozes from his lips, his stare icy and calculated, his outbursts of rage entirely expected. John Jarratt’s Wolf Creek psycho undergoes a transformation on screen that defines him as human being first, a killer of human beings second; Edgerton’s evil is conspicuous in the absence of humanity – he is so malevolent, how he got by unnoticed in a small community is never answered.
Acolytes is ultimately little more than a generic B-movie, wallowing in the confines of its genre. The claustrophobic ending has been done before and better; the teen leads okay, though Sebastian Gregory never engages on any level as the out-of-his-depth Mark. When Edgerton’s killer begins to toy with Mark, it’s like watching a cat play with a mouse – it’s sad but you don’t really care. Let the cat have his fun"¦
In recent times, the Australian film industry has produced some very dark films of varying artistic worth. Bar the sweeping Hollywood-isation of our nation via Baz Luhrmann and the positive human story at the heart of The Black Balloon, the local sector has delved into some pretty unpleasant subjects lately – teen suicide (2:37), outback killers (Wolf Creek and Gone), working class woes (Newcastle, Suburban Mayhem and Ten Empty), crime melodramas (The Square), the suffering at the heart of the ethnic experience (The Combination, Romulus My Father, Home Song Stories and Two Fists One Heart) and drug addiction (Little Fish and Candy). Acolytes fits in with the current trend to create artistic works that explore the darkest corners of the Australian psyche and its society, that have no chance of finding an audience (it’s playing in one uptown Sydney cinema). Unless we can freshen these genres with a distinctly Australian point-of-view, their relevance and necessity must be questioned.
