Extraordinary cinema isn't always a pleasant thing to behold, and these days it seems like the norm for films to gloss over the ugliness with glitz and flash. Enter Justin Kurzel's "Snowtown", domestically known as "The Snowtown Murders", though I absolutely refuse to address it with such a clinical title. "Clinical" is the last word I'd use to describe it, since most of the shocks and pains of this picture do come from a place of honesty.
While describing some of what was going on in the film to my roommates, they were repeatedly asking if this really happened, as if the truth of it would somehow degrade over time. Indeed, that is very much the emotion that I had while watching the film, was one of denial. The film starts out so smoothly, and indeed is able to continuously trick us into feeling that smoothness again and again, all the while a storm outside is brewing, and it's right there for us to see anyway.
Based on the real Australian murder story between 1992 and 1999, "Snowtown" focuses in on a lower-class suburban family in the titular town, who undergo abuse from the mother's deceitful boyfriend. Out of the distress of the situation comes John Bunting, who lifts the family up out of banality as protector, leader, but eventually master. Things soon fall out of the family's control, and they find themselves in a situation from which there is no escape.
