By Richard Winters
My Rating: 5 out of 10
4-Word Review: Teen ages very rapidly.
Allison (Joanne Samuel) decides to spend her 19th birthday with her aunt (Bunney Brooke) and uncle (John Bluthal) who live in rural Australia and have been raising her ever since her parents died when she was just a child. However, this visit includes her meeting her elderly grandmother (Marion Jones) for the first time and a mysterious illness that also affects her while she is there. Her aunt and uncle refuse to allow her boyfriend Peter (Lou Brown) to visit causing him to go to great lengths to get her away from them and back to safety as he fears they’ve come under the influence of a cult.
This low budget Australian sleeper managed to become a hit in its own country mainly from its attempts to work against-the-grain of that era by creating a horror film that did not involve blood and gore, but instead relied on good old fashioned creepiness. For the most part it succeeds, but gets hampered by a plot that plays itself out too slowly.
It becomes too obvious that her aunt and uncle have some evil intent in mind and this should’ve been camouflaged better because when the big reveal finally does come about during the third act it’s not surprising at all. The cult that they’re involved with is portrayed in such a cliched way from the tacky black robes that they wear to the Stonehenge-like meeting place that it seems like high camp. The opening sequence featuring a ouji board and a talking spirit, is equally heavy-handed and almost sinks this thing before it’s barely begun.
Some of the action segments particularly her boyfriend’s attempts to outrun the cult members who try chasing him down is exciting, but he’s in too much of the movie, while Allison remains virtually bedridden making it seem like he’s the main character instead of her. A good protagonist should be able to fight her own battles and in this case she does too little, which doesn’t elicit enough emotion from the viewer to want to cheer her on.
Spoiler Alert!
The film’s twist ending in which, due to the ritual ceremony done by the cult, a young Allison suddenly wakes up to find herself trapped inside the body of her grandmother, is pretty cool and genuinely quite horrifying when you think about it. However, this should’ve occurred during the middle part and the rest of the film spent with her trying to return her spirit back to her youthful body, which could’ve involved a wide array of intriguing and unique elements. Unfortunately this doesn’t happen making the film only a skeletal blueprint of what it could’ve been.
My Rating: 5 out of 10
Released: May 1, 1981
Runtime: 1 Hour 37 Minutes
Not Rated
Director: Ian Coughlan
Studio: Australian Film Institute
Available: VHS
Scopophilia 