Snowtown (Justin Kurzel, 2011)

Detailing the eleven murders that took place in a blue-collar Adelaide suburb in the '90s, Snowtown is virtually unwatchable at times in its brutality. It's so thoroughly unglamorised in its determination to tell it like it is that it cannot work as entertainment even for the most hardened slasher film devotee. We hardly see anything of the murders, with the director determined to avoid vicarious action movie thrills. This is the film's overriding asset: it adds a layer of cold menace to the ring leader of the killings of homosexual and socially vulnerable victims and his inexorable grooming of an abused teenage boy to do his megalomaniac bidding. It'll leave you feeling sick, but it's an honest exercise.

7/10