MOVIE: THE LOVED ONES
“Hey, your next film is a remake of Muriel’s Wedding with a horror focus!” Richard Wilson shouts to the director of The Loved Ones – in which he plays a stoner sidekick. We are discussing Australian movies, and the sometimes not-so-sexy associations they come with. “That sounds good!” is the muffled reply from Tasmanian-born Sean Byrne. A ‘glam-horror’ that’s mood board ranges from Misery to Tarantino and Pretty in Pink, and starring the definitely sexy Xavier Samuel from Eclipse, The Loved Ones could be Australia’s next defining big-screen success. It has already scooped the Midnight Madness award at Toronto (pipping Diablo Cody’s Jennifer’s Body) and the Siren Award in Sweden. But will it win the hearts of a distrustful Australian public – wary of another Wolf Creek, or even worse, Paperback Hero? “My brother always says, is it an Australian film? Well then, I don’t want to see it …” laughs Wilson.
If any film could sway a dubious sibling, it might be this one. From go to whoah, it is packed with high-octane visuals, a relentlessly poppy soundtrack including Kasey Chambers’ now-creepy Not Pretty Enough, a painfully attractive cast and gut-dropping twists. When watching it, my flatmate had to keep running out of the room with gurgled screams, “What’s happening now?!”
“Every day was torture,” says John Brumpton, the Daddy, who goes from running the local serial killer show to taking cues from his maniacal daughter, Lola. “I was waking up in a sweat, after having really violent dreams.” And this from someone whose ability to master the ‘Crazy Eyes’ from his background in boxing has taken him from roles in Romper Stomper to Storm Warning with Jamie Blanks of Urban Legend and Valentine. “I kind of developed a crazy laugh,” admits Robin McLeavy, who steps in as his ‘Princess’, “At the time I thought, this is so much fun playing a psycho! But then by the end of the shoot I realised I had developed a twitch in one of my eyes.” With research material including the Jeffrey Dahmer cases, it’s not surprising.
“The film has one foot planted firmly in commercial territory, and the other dangling over a cliff,” says Byrne. “Hollywood basically invented the cabin-the-woods genre, and the prom subgenre, but the foot dangling over the cliff is a nod to our irreverent Australian sense of humour and our wild streak, harking back to films like Mad Max and Razorback. I wanted to use an American model structurally but then blend it with Australia’s unique ability to take the piss out of ourselves!” That unique ability could almost see Muriel’s Zombie Wedding becoming a reality … almost.
Opens nationally Nov 4. Read our review in the Movies section!
