By Richard Winters
My Rating: 8 out of 10
4-Word Review: Revenge for her rabbit.
Celia (Rebecca Smart) is a head-strong 8-year-old living in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia during the end of the 50’s. She is mourning the recent loss of her grandmother while also fearing the hobyahs, which are mythical creatures she read about in school that she has nightmares about breaking into her bedroom late at night. When Alice (Victoria Longley) and her three children move in next door it allows Celia to get her mind off of things as she becomes fast friends with the kids and even Alice herself, but their relationship is soon hampered when Celia’s father, Ray (Nicholas Eadie), finds out that Alice and her husband are supporters of the Communist Party. Ray forbids Celia from seeing them and offers her a pet rabbit, something she’s wanted for a long time, as a bribe insisting that she can keep the pet as long she no longer socializes with the neighbors. However, this brings up more problems as the Australian government has deemed rabbits to be an invasive species and has outlawed anyone from having one. Burke (William Zappa), the local police Sargent, confiscates the rabbit in the middle of the night and then it’s later found dead while being housed at the local zoo causing Celia to come up with a devious plan in order to exact her revenge.
The film, which was inspired by a news article writer/director Ann Turner read when she was 24 involving the rabbit invasion that plagued Australia during the 50’s, is labeled a horror movie, though in a compromised form as IMDb calls it a ‘folk horror’ while other movie sources call it a ‘horror drama’. In any case fans of the conventional horror film may not take to this or find it off-putting as the typical scares and tension are not present. There are some creepy moments particularly the dream sequences involving the hobyhahs, which I wished had been in it more, and a segment dealing with Celia’s dead grandmother tapping on her bedroom window late one night, but overall, that’s about it. Most of the rest of the film comes-off more like a coming-of-age drama, which is excellent, but the real disturbing part doesn’t come until the very end. It’s effective and well earned, but whether all viewers will be patient enough to wait for it I’m not sure.
With that said it’s still a great movie with characters that are three dimensional, something that Australian cinema does very well, and the viewer gets wrapped up into the drama quite quickly. The best element is that the kid characters are genuine. These are like real children that I knew growing up where they could be cute and precocious one minute and mean and bratty the next. The inner rivalries that Celia has with the other kids in the neighborhood are quite real too. Kids don’t just automatically get along, there can be contrasting egos and personalities that can easily get in the way, just like with adults, that can quickly turn playmates into enemies. It’s rare that I can say this, but I really felt while watching this, that I had been transported back into my own childhood as the encounters and exchanges very closely reflected my own in many ways.
The adults are portrayed much better here too. Usually, movies that revolve around young people have the grown-ups stigmatized in one extreme or the other. Either they’re clueless dimwits that are totally out-of-it or overly controlling. Here though they’re well meaning, but so busy with their own lives that just can’t stay attuned with everything their kids are doing and much of the time is spent with them just trying to catch-up with the drama that they didn’t even know was occurring. Celia’s father isn’t mean here either, he simply has a different perspective of things and doing what he thinks is best for his child even as this gets Celia to hate him but like with many households this type of scenario can and does happen even with the best of intentions.
Spoiler Alert!
The ending should leave you with an unsettling feeling when it’s over. This is the rare time when if fully works too. No loose ends, or loopholes. Everything fits perfectly with the characters fleshed out so it all makes sense. This is also a unique film in that there really aren’t any villains. No one is ‘bad’, or ‘evil’. It’s just people, young and old, with different ideas about things and their inability, through no real fault of their own, to effectively communicate it to the other, or for the other to fully listen and understand, which is ultimately what makes it so horrifying as this could easily and believably happen anywhere.
My Rating: 8 out of 10
Released: March 3, 1989
Runtime: 1 Hour 43 Minutes
Not Rated
Director: Ann Turner
Studio: Seon Film Productions
Available: DVD, Blu-ray
Scopophilia 