This film is really hard to watch much of the time, not only for the physical and sexual violence depicted on screen, but also the emotional abuse. It's just really unsettling, painful, brutal, tough, disturbing, and horrific.
It follows a murderous couple, John and Evelyn, who kidnap a teenaged girl, Vicki, in Perth, Australia in 1987. The things that transpire are harrowing and stomach-turning. What makes it all the more scary is the fact that this film is quite plausible. The "bad guys" look respectable: like you and me, your neighbors, teachers; they look like normal people, which makes this all the more disquieting. It all feels so real, raw, and visceral. The characters feel like real people and are multidimensional, including the villains, who so easily could've been written as one-dimensional evil people caricatures with no interiority. Evelyn is abused and damaged by John, which is why she tags along. John abuses her and kidnaps teenage girls because it makes him feel dominant. And Vicki isn't a damsel in distress; she's clever and quickly picks up on the tension and power dynamics of the captor couple and manipulates them in her attempts to escape. The dialogue feels realistic and the cinematography is very simplistic and pared-back, almost shot like a documentary, further elevating the verisimilitude; it often feels like you're a fly on the wall. Everything feels gritty.
The acting across the board is good. Emma Booth, Ashleigh Cummings, and Susie Porter are the standouts and all give really great performances. Booth as Evelyn in particular turns in a superb, impressive performance. The swath of emotions she conveys so organically is really something; she vacillates between being chilling to sympathetic to scary to pathetic to pleasant to enraged to envious.
I won't spoil anything, but the ending is really touching and edited so well. It so easily could've felt overly sentimental, but it just felt so moving, which further elevated the film overall. This is definitely worth a watch, albeit it's not for the faint of heart.
