Actor turned writer/director Joel Edgerton’s psychological thriller The Gift plays a very clever game. Mining audiences’ collective nostalgia for the sort of home-invading creeps archly delivered by Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, Rebecca De Mornay in The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, Robert De Niro in Cape Fear or Jennifer Jason Leigh in Single White Female, the movie smartly flips our expectations of the genre in unexpected yet still gloriously popcorn ways.
Artfully disguised behind brown contact lenses and a dreadful hairdo - almost as bad as but not quite living up to Javier Bardem’s shocker in No Country For Old Men, Edgerton affects a US accent to play the disturbingly awkward Gordo, an old school friend of playing-it-straight Jason Bateman’s ambitious business executive Simon.
Simon has just relocated to LA for a brilliant new job, leaving wife Robyn (Rebecca Hall) to set up home while running her freelance interior design business. There’s an unspoken tension haunting this couple that is exacerbated by the appearance of Gordo, who rapidly and overbearingly insinuates himself into their private lives, awakening long-buried secrets that soon blow sky high.
Excellent turns all round see this disturbingly techy take on the psycho genre mess with our heads, forcing us to question who the real bad guy is a little more thoroughly than we expected to.
In celebration of the hometown release of Edgerton’s huge Stateside success, we take a look at 10 of the scariest psychos stalking the SBS On Demand collection.
Russell Crowe, the Kiwi we like to claim as our own, plays Hando, a delightful Neo-Nazi skinhead with a xenophobic chip as wide as the gashes he leaves in other people’s heads in writer/directors Geoffrey Wright’s controversial, multi-AFI award-winning film. Crowe’s furiously terrifying performance invokes the spirit of Malcolm McDowell’s Alex in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, making his own real-life strops seem tame. In other words, if Hando thinks you should go back to where you came from, just run.
[link title="Romper Stomper review: The movie David Stratton famously refused to rate" url="node/44563"]
Source: SBS Movies
Not every killer ripples with the barely contained malice of a muscular, fascist thug. Robert Thompson gets to cause psychokinetic mayhem, Carrie-style, comatose from his sickbed with nothing more than some serious side eye shade in Australian director Richard Franklin’s cult classic horror flick Patrick. With the hots for his nurse Kathy (Susan Penhaligan), it’s only a matter of time before he has his wicked way with her.
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[link title="Read the Patrick review" url="node/6273"]
[link title="Read the Patrick review" url="node/6273"]
Source: Patrick
The towering menace that is Gunnar Hansen’s Leatherface in Tobe Hooper’s seminal slasher did not have a very good childhood, with his hicksville family being cannibals and all. It’s hardly surprising, then, that his chosen coping mechanism, namely attempting to hack pretty young things into lots of little bits with the aid of his trusty chainsaw, isn’t entirely well adjusted. Initially banned, it’s now rightfully recognised as a classic of the horror genre.
[link title="Why The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is the Best Horror Movie Ever Made" url="node/17788"]
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New James Bond Q Ben Whishaw inhabits the skin of scentless yet olfactory obsessed perfume genius Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in Tom Tyker’s viscerally repugnant adaptation of Patrick Süskind’s 18th century France-set novel. Adorable in real life, Whishaw will have your skin crawling in no time as Grenouille sets out on his single-minded mission, perfectly willing to kill for a whiff of the finest fragrance.
Source: Perfume
Speaking of psychotic perfectionists, Antonio Banderas reunites with the master of Spanish sensuality who kick-started his career, Pedro Almodóvar, conjuring up a memorably conflicted villain in this stylishly creepy set piece. Portraying a damaged plastic surgeon and all-round mad scientist Robert Ledgard, cast from the Frankenstein mould, he has imprisoned Elena Anaya’s Vera Cruz and is attempting re-create her in the image of his late wife. Love and loss are, as ever in Almodóvar’s films, at the very heart of this mad house.
[link title="The Skin I Live In: Elena Anaya interview" url="node/763"]
[link title="Why You Should Watch: The Skin I Live In" url="node/13865"]
[link title="The Skin I Live In Review" url="node/5470"]
Source: The Skin I Live In
As Alfred Hitchcock was well aware, the thrill of horrors perceived, not actually seen, can pack just as hard a punch. Prolific French writer/director learned that lesson early on, with tension-wracked anxiety induced by his first mid-length feature See the Sea. Marina de Van is terrifically unnerving as Tatiana, the unbidden guest who rocks up at Englishwoman Sasha’s (Sasha Hails) beachside holiday home while her husband is away. The sense of inexorable danger and brooding undercurrent of sexual tension is electric, but just who is the monster here?
A French-Chinese co-production, the writing duo responsible for Hong Kong director Johnnie To's Running Out of Time, Julien Carbon and Laurent Courtiaud, mark their directorial debut here. It’s all about star Carrie Ng’s maniacal turn as a jade dragon-clawed sexpot art thief and assassin after a mysterious artefact containing legendary poison that happens to be in the grip of Frédérique Bel’s alluring art dealer Catherine. Secret sadists will get a kick out of this erotic thriller.
Source: Red Nights
The french love a good creep, but not every psycho has to be straight laced. José Garcia plays unemployed executive Bruno who hits on a novel way to get back into the workforce – by wiping out all the competition, hit man-style. A razor sharp black comedy, Costa-Grava’s outrageous The Axe has you rooting for the bad guy à la Kathleen Turner in Serial Mom or Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler.
Source: Axe
Anyone with even a passing knowledge of a certain iconic dystopian film’s food source should taste something fishy on the palette as they come into Chinese director Fruit Chan’s deliciously wicked and highly satirical horror Dumplings. Expanded from a short, Bai Ling is devilishly good as Mei, the mainland ex-pat who’ll stop at nothing to get ahead, making a living selling mysteriously youth-retaining dumplings of dubious origin to desperate Hong Kong housewives.
Source: Dumplings
Ok, so it was never going to win any Oscars, but for a certain generation brought up on icky incest yarns long before the TV adaptation of 'Game Of Thrones' made it popular, Jeffrey Blooms’ movie adaptation of V.C. Chandler’s novel about four kids imprisoned in an attic by their money-hungry mum and abusive gran was cult catnip. Louise Fletcher chews the scenery with gusto as the psychotic gran in question, and look out for a young Kristy Swanson as put-upon heroine Cathy.
Source: Flowers in the Attic
