Member-only story
Review: ‘Hounds of Love’ Mistakes Being Explicit for Being Effective
Ben Young’s 2016 true-story crime horror, unfortunately, prioritises perversion over its themes and characters
Trigger warning: this review will discuss sexual violence, physical violence and murder. It also contains mild spoilers for both Hounds of Love and Snowtown (Justin Kurzel, 2011).
As I may have explained before, one of my most memorable experiences with any film was my first time seeing Justin Kurzel’s 2011 crime drama Snowtown. Based on a true story, the film from the director of Nitram, Macbeth, True History of the Kelly Gang (all worth seeing!) and… Assassin’s Creed… (less worth seeing!) is about Australian serial killer John Bunting. Going in completely unfamiliar with the plot or where it was going — knowing only that it was a well liked Australian drama — the film’s gradual development into one of the starkest, most no-frills accounts of horrific, realistic violence remains one of a handful of times that I have been genuinely shaken by a film (next to experiences such as sitting through the Chernobyl miniseries, seeing Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs or, in a different medium, trying to read Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian).
