THRILLER; 1hr 30min
STARRING: Ella Scott Lynch, Benedict Samuel
Walpurgis night: Scott Lynch
Whisky-washed dissolution is a Sydney way of life in the dark brown study of director David Barker’s feature-film debut. Lewis (Samuel) is a smarmy, manipulative sybarite who plays women as sexual chess pieces with his coddled housemate Kenny (Robin Goldsworthy) as his gormless second banana. When their paths cross with fractured party girl Sarah (Scott Lynch) one night and a predatory sting goes disastrously wrong, they’re all headed straight to hell. With Kenny out of the picture, Sarah and Lewis are partners in crime (which pleases them even less than their earlier, airless barroom flirtation seemed to) and the GBH is by no means over.
Depravity is a reliably slippery slope. Clocking in at a tidy 90 minutes, Barker and Lou Mentor’s screenplay is as vicious and decisive as a shiv to the ribs—although, to its credit, nowhere near as predictable. Thanks to crafty plotting and an unforeseeable performance from Scott Lynch as a troubled woman of too many parts, every step down is a disturbing surprise.
