Simply Perfect

Crappy film

Brilliant and touching

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Until this movie and after, absolutely all the movies with psychopaths are a joke. Hollywood movies, horrors, gore films, psychological thrillers and so on are pitiful. None can surprise the reality of a psychopath, more frightening than any fiction, like this movie. Now, I only want to miss this nightmare, although I am proud to have healed myself from any pseudo- psychological understanding of the psychopath. I recommend it the ones less weakest heart in order just to get rid of the same delusions as mine, about the 'humanity of psychopath' - the oxymoron that creates the illusion that you can deal with a psychopath untouched of psychic traumas if you are lucky enough not to be killed by him from pure pleasure.

I won't go into the plot. But this film is a visual masterpiece. It very slowly and steadily goes from being a somber character study to being a very disturbing and gripping horror. The dialogue is fairly terse and to the point - the visual tells the story. You could watch it without the sound and be just as entertained. It might even be more effective. The tension begins immediately and you don't quite know why it's there, save for the title. But it never releases its grip, but it also doesn't really grow. That same, steady, unrelenting level of tension is there, all along, whether the scene depicts children playing around the dinner table, a pastor at a church addressing his flock, a rainy scene of a dilapidated back yard, or a grisly, realistic torture killing. Brilliant really. You feel uneasy when the film is calm, and when there's a sharp upturn in violence, you expect the music or the cinematography or a character to well up with emotion to match it, but it holds you steady, not allowing you to feel an overture, like it's holding your head making you watch. Very disquieting. One of the better indie films I've ever seen.

A true crime story is always intriguing but this beauty goes beyond. If that's your thing, like it is mine to watch all those documentaries on serial killers, this movie will melt you in your seat. The way the layout of this movie is conveyed it just makes you want more to happen you want to know more. The actors in this movie each suited the role they played and were all perfect. There isn't one thing about this movie I'd change, in fact I could sit here and watch Snowtown over and over because each time I watch it I pick up something new,It's a must see movie, I would recommend this to anyone especially if you liked Chopper (2000). This is portrayed in a very similar way.

For casual viewers who don't know anything about the real case (look it up - very interesting/disturbing), this film is VERY hard to follow. The plot is quite disjointed and it would have benefited from probably a shorter duration and a more coherent flow for those who did not know much about the case. I found myself becoming disinterested in some of the long, drawn out scenes where I did not really understand what was happening. In retrospect, after researching the case, I will probably give the film a re-watch.Other than that the film was solidly acted and had some very impressive, raw cinematography - the film was full of very simple, banal elements like power lines, water towers, naked trees, isolated landscapes and low ceilings of clouds… and while the film is set amongst this industrial ugliness and poverty/malaise of the outer suburbs, there is a lyrical, dreamlike beauty about the way this harsh world is presented, often in saturated, dark low light reminiscent of David Lynch, the early Cohen Brothers work and the similarly themed "Boys Don't Cry" (1999), which would be worth checking out if you enjoyed this one.7/10