Not Quite Hollywood director Mark Hartley\u2019s new feature is a scorcher \u2014 a cattle prod to the senses that reminds the Oz film industry that \u201cgenre\u201d isn\u2019t a dirty word.<\/p>\n
See itThe gatekeepers of Australian film financing bodies, baby boomers who were shaggy-haired youth when Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider sparked the American film renaissance of the 60s and 70s, came to view the emergence of blockbusters and middle of the road multiplex movies as something to be wary of. Buoyed by government funding, they crossed the street and took it upon themselves to finance and re-finance \u201cartistic\u201d films with virtually no commercial potential and, often, virtually no sense of art.<\/p>\n
There have been many successes along the way but the failures are too many and varied to name. Recently the Australian film industry couldn\u2019t make a sports movie about football; it had to be a coastal-set drama about the emotional aftermath of rape. We couldn\u2019t do a superhero movie; a caped crusader storyline was a disguise for a somber exploration of mental illness, ensuring an otherwise built-in audience would stay away in droves. We couldn\u2019t make a cricket tournament movie; it had to use the pitch as a metaphor for moving from one phase of adult life to the next.<\/p>\n
The wreckage reaped by Oz film financiers perpetuated a dichotomy between what \u201cnormal\u201d audiences want to watch and where their tax dollars go. This led to a perception that if you don\u2019t live in inner city suburbs and aren\u2019t partial to stories about people who collapse in the gutter with needles in their arms, Australian films are not for you
\nif you don\u2019t live in inner city suburbs and aren\u2019t partial to stories about people who collapse in the gutter with needles in their arms, Australian films are not for you
\n. Somewhere along the line \u201cgenre\u201d became a dirty word.<\/p>\n
Interviewees in director Mark Hartley\u2019s terrific Ozploitation documentary Not Quite Hollywood (2008) heralded Greg Mclean\u2019s Wolf Creek (2005) as a game-changer: an export-ready smash hit horror\/thriller that bridged the gap between critics and audiences, aficionados and punters.<\/p>\n
By the time its sequel hits our screens next year almost a full decade will have passed, an inordinate wait for what could have been a financial cert, and a solid bet from an artistic perspective. In half that time Hartley has made two other pictures: Machete Maidens Unleashed!, an encyclopedic doco about Filipino genre filmmaking, and now Patrick, a remake of one of several Tarantino-lauded cult films flagged in NQH.<\/p>\n
Richard Franklin\u2019s 1978 original is a stodgy but memorable pic about a comatose hospital patient with telekinetic powers and anger management issues. Patrick (now played by Jackson Gallagher) takes a liking to his new nurse, now Nurse Williams (Sharni Vinson) and sets about destroying other men in her life. It\u2019s a Misery-meets-Carrie premise, the central point of orbit a character whose sole physical ability is to spit but can mentally do virtually anything he likes, including controlling other people. This leads to an awkward first date; it\u2019s hard to get to second base after hocking a loogie at your partner\u2019s face.<\/p>\n
In Hartley\u2019s film the head doctor of a dilapidated hospital is incarnated with classic diabolical campiness by Charles Dance, clearly in his element when scarfing down live frogs and dourly rolling off lines such as \u201che (Patrick) is currently 165 pounds of meat hanging off a dead brain.\u201d Rachel Griffiths is a Ratched-like head nurse. This time it\u2019s the maniacal movie around her that\u2019s one flew over the cuckoo\u2019s nest.<\/p>\n
The story has been modernised: Patrick can now surf through your social media accounts and is played by an actor who wouldn\u2019t look out of place in a Twilight movie. Hartley\u2019s technically and stylistically superior film moves with a flashy kineticism Australian viewers are not used to seeing; their local pictures don\u2019t usually look this good or burn their way through running times this quickly.<\/p>\n
During the story\u2019s \u201cslow\u201d burning build (creepy hospital, new nurse, connection with patient, first glimpses of mayhem etc) Hartley\u2019s frames twist, turn, zoom, pan\u2026 a swimming motion sustained during even the more simplistic shots. You\u2019d call it style over substance if the style wasn\u2019t so good, and the substance so cryptic but effusive, a witch\u2019s broth of weirdness bubbling away at the film\u2019s core.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the sheer energy of Patrick and the schmick midnight look of it that provide cover when the cast dip into the odd spot of flaky B movie style acting (though the self-assurance of Dance and Griffiths\u2019 performances render them imperturbable) and the story careens into madness.<\/p>\n
That madness is ultimately, like the grotty genre films Hartley dug out of piles of dodgy detritus for Not Quite Hollywood, what makes Patrick a great late night horror movie \u2014 an awesome vial of mad scientist cinema glossed with the varnish of a gothic looking art film
\nan awesome vial of mad scientist cinema glossed with the varnish of a gothic looking art film
\n. Just when you think it can\u2019t bounce, crash, leap and hurl forward any faster, with any more ferocity, with a more measured sense of hysterical purpose, Hartley finds a way to crank the dial to eleven then smash it to pieces.<\/p>\n
The last 20 minutes are slap-to-the-face mesmerising, an instant blood stain on the carpet of bat shit crazy Australian filmmaking. This roaringly good high voltage genre film \u2014 take note, Oz film financiers, that it ain\u2019t a dirty word \u2014 is the work of a director who drank the bong water and gorged on the gunk, emerging from the rubble schooled by the shortcomings of many other lesser works.<\/p>\n
Hartley understands all too well that a pulpy midnight horror movie can be many things (Fast! Trashy! Outrageous! Over the top!) but it cannot be boring. It cannot be complacent. And it cannot take the audience for granted.