With Killing Ground, I've realized that I've inadvertently ended up doing another theme in my last few reviews. And that theme is, Never Leave Your House. Whether it's travelling down a deserted road, going on a hiking holiday in some isolated Nordic woods, or going on a camping trip, bad things will happen to you. And of course, today's film is also Australian, which along with Wolf Creek and huntsman spiders, just further cements my decision to never visit that country under nearly any circumstance.
Ian and Sam are a couple heading to an isolated beauty spot for a spot of New Year camping. They're expecting the place to be deserted as it is an out-of-the-way place, but when they get to the area they see that another family has apparently gotten there before them... although aside from their car and tent there is no sign of them. Unbeknownst to Ian and Sam, three days earlier a family had been camping there, but two local men out hunting boar had come across them and decided to kidnap, rape and kill them. Sam finds the family's toddler son wandering the area at the same time that one of the men returns to the spot to make sure they left no evidence or witnesses, and soon the couple is being hunted through the woods by the two killers, who are armed with hunting rifles, a hunting dog and knowledge of the area. Will they be able to escape safely and bring these killers to justice?
There's a scene in Killing Ground where the two antagonists, German and Chook, play a bit of a shooting game with an empty beer can balanced on top of their victims' heads, and watching that scene I couldn't help but think of Ivan Milat - the real-life serial killer who still seems to haunt Australian horror movies to this day. The connection might be smaller and vaguer than the infamous Wolf Creek, but it's still there if you squint for it. German and Chook aren't really portrayed as serial killers though - or at least, they're not already established as such as the film starts - and in a way that actually makes them more unsettling; two men who stumbled across a situation at random and turned it into something horrible for their own pleasure.
Rather interestingly, there's very little on-screen violence in the movie, but the film doesn't suffer for it. The key example of this is with the first murdered family - we see them being bound and led into the woods, and we know that terrible things are going to happen to them... and then the next scene cuts straight to the aftermath: father tied to a tree and mother and daughter lying sobbing or unconscious on the ground. It's clear that they've been horribly violated, but the fact that we didn't see those events ourselves leaves us to fill in the blanks, and apparently, our minds can go to some pretty dark places when encouraged like this. The way this scene is shot is also very effective - long static shots showing everyone in the scene, with the teenage daughter lying mostly naked and still in the foreground, makes a pretty bleak statement that stays with you for a long time.
Killing Ground's story is not told in a linear fashion, which wouldn't be too bad except that it's not immediately clear what's happening. So for the first 20 minutes or so it can get pretty confusing trying to work out what is going on and when. Non-linear storytelling isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's also quite easy to lose the audience if you're not careful and don't have some sort of indicators for what order events have actually happened in. Our protagonists are also maybe a little too sensible in their actions and reactions - we know that the best thing to do when hunted by an armed psychopath through unfamiliar woods is to get out and call the authorities, but deep down no-one watches horror films to watch people doing the sensible thing. And yet, the film's sensible streak falls to the wayside when it comes to Ollie, Australia's Toughest Toddler. He's wandered in the woods for one or two days, in 25-degree heat and with no water or food, then later thrown head-first to the ground, and yet he still toddles off again and his fate at the end is left unknown.
Killing Ground is quite a tense film, one that relies on atmosphere and character rather than scenes of torture and gore to unnerve its audience. It makes a few missteps - early confusion with the order or events; characters being a little too sensible for effective horror movie tension - and one could say that it's yet another Australian film where people in the middle of nowhere are hunted by killers with hunting rifles, but it's certainly not a bad film, and worth a watch if you're still not entirely convinced that the worst thing you can possibly do is go on holiday.
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