Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on The New Portable.
Horror movies come in any number of varieties. One of the clearest distinctions is between movies that are based in the supernatural and those that are based more in reality. A movie like The Silence of the Lambs is clearly horror and purely within the realm of possibility, which makes it that much more terrifying for me. Contrast that with, say, A Nightmare on Elm Street, which is terrifying in the moment, but then stops affecting me the moment the movie is over. Snowtown, also known as The Snowtown Murders is very much a film of the first variety. In fact, this is based on a real case of the most notorious serial killer in Australia and the young man who he influenced.
That summary really is what Snowtown is about; the rest is really just the details. Those details focus on Jamie Vlassakis (Lucas Pittaway), a young man who lives in poverty with his family in a poor suburb of Adelaide, Australia. His mother (Louise Harris) does the best she can, which honestly isn’t that great for her kids. Need evidence of this? At one point, Jamie is raped by his older brother Troy (Anthony Groves) and her boyfriend takes indecent pictures of all three of her sons. A gay, cross-dressing neighbor named Barry (Richard Green) introduces her to John Bunting (Daniel Henshall).
