Hounds of Love

An amalgam of two real-life cases, and set in suburban Perth in the late-1980s, this debut film from director-to-watch Ben Young brilliantly chronicles the murder spree of a serial-killing couple who kidnap, keep hostage and eventually dispose of a succession of teenage girls. But they get their comeuppance when one victim manages to drive an emotional wedge between the pair. Emma Booth and Stephen Curry are spot-on as the killer couple: he cool, calm and collected, except when he's killing kids or kicking dogs to death; she needy and emotionally dependent on him. Ashleigh Cummings is no slouch as the couple's latest abductee either. The movie cleverly dupes the viewer into thinking that its violence is much more explicit than it actually is. But it's a genuinely unsettling, sometimes gruelling experience nonetheless. You feel a little grubby just for watching it, let alone liking it. This is seriously good film-making, though - just not for the faint-hearted nor weak-stomached.