Australia | 2008 | Directed by Jon Hewitt
Logline: Three mischievous teenagers decide to blackmail a suspected serial killer, but their plans go dangerously awry.
Set amidst the gorgeous Queensland forest and juxtaposed with a sprawling suburbia, Acolytes is a murderous tale of deceit and betrayal, blackmail and revenge, and like all tales of this ilk, Murphy’s Law will extend its long insidious arm and cruelly snap your fingers … ‘cos it can.
Three wayward teenagers, Sebastian Gregory (Mark), Joshua Payne (James) and Hannah Mangan-Lawrence (Chasely), play the schemers who become involved in the lives of two very dangerous men; Gary Parker (Michael Dorman), an aggressive sociopath who bullied and violated them during puberty, and Ian Wright (Joel Edgerton), a psychopathic serial killer living in a disquieting existence with his deaf wife and kid. They will all collide with tragic, but surprising results.
Right from the get-go Acolytes looks and sounds impressive, with its vivid cinematography, tight, dynamic editing, and a spare, but very deliberate use of sound and music. The score seems almost non-existent, while the use of rock songs is a tightly calibrated decision. The sound design is creepy and very effective. Hewitt has carved out a very stylish psychological horror, with a strong visceral edge, and he elicits solid performances from his young cast, but an especially memorable one from Mangan-Lawrence.
The volatile relationship between the three teenagers - a triangle of sexual tension, macho competition, and unrequited crush - adds serious fuel to the fire, while the presence of bogan Parker, armed with his black Valiant and black crossbow, and the mustachioed Wright, a figure in the guise of dull ordinariness, is a brilliant juxtaposition of evils.
It’s a most dangerous and deadly game where the rules keep changing, the playground keeps shifting, the narrative keeps twisting, back and forth. Acolytes is one of the best Australian horror-thrillers from the past twenty years, and one that, criminally so, few people know about.