"The Babadook meets The Entity in the most original and powerful Australian haunted house film in years."
- Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
- Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
Social media is hell for everyone, but in Lost Gully Road, Lucy (Adele Perovic) discovers the hard way that it can be a case of life and death. Forced to get out of town – fast – her concerned sister Cassie (Eloise Mignon) finds her temporary accommodation in a region of Australia’s lush yet isolated rainforest. Physically and psychologically immobilised by fear and wrestling with extreme boredom on top of it, Lucy’s already tenuous mental health begins to crumble as we ask if her unseen visitor is a figment of her imagination or a very real threat to her safety.
As the sophomore feature of filmmaker Donna McRae, Lost Gully Road is visually and tonally a striking shift from her 2011 debut Johnny Ghost, yet both movies at their heart share a fascination with haunted women struggling with issues of control, identity, reality and history. With Lost Gully Road, the strange sense of isolation and entrapment so specific to Australian cinema is reconfigured in a horror context to grant McRae a voice to speak of the ubiquity of sexual violence and the subjectivity of trauma in a way uniquely her own.
As Lucy, Perovic’s strong yet understated performance drives Lost Gully Road, and her collaboration with McRae grants the film a much-needed degree of humanity when dealing with such confronting material. But the film is also a welcome return to horror for John Brumpton (who co-starred in Sean Byrne's cult Australian film The Loved Ones in 2009), and casts legendary Australian actor Jane Clifton from the beloved television series Prisoner/Cell Block H as Lucy’s unpleasantly cloying landlady Val.
Like all great horror films, Lost Gully Road speaks a profound truth through its employment of the supernatural and the fantastic. Spooky, tense and at times extremely uncomfortable, Lost Gully Road forces us to see things that we might otherwise not believe are there, and to experience up close the subjectivity of what it feels like to live through the incomprehensible. (Alexandra Heller-Nicholas)
As the sophomore feature of filmmaker Donna McRae, Lost Gully Road is visually and tonally a striking shift from her 2011 debut Johnny Ghost, yet both movies at their heart share a fascination with haunted women struggling with issues of control, identity, reality and history. With Lost Gully Road, the strange sense of isolation and entrapment so specific to Australian cinema is reconfigured in a horror context to grant McRae a voice to speak of the ubiquity of sexual violence and the subjectivity of trauma in a way uniquely her own.
As Lucy, Perovic’s strong yet understated performance drives Lost Gully Road, and her collaboration with McRae grants the film a much-needed degree of humanity when dealing with such confronting material. But the film is also a welcome return to horror for John Brumpton (who co-starred in Sean Byrne's cult Australian film The Loved Ones in 2009), and casts legendary Australian actor Jane Clifton from the beloved television series Prisoner/Cell Block H as Lucy’s unpleasantly cloying landlady Val.
Like all great horror films, Lost Gully Road speaks a profound truth through its employment of the supernatural and the fantastic. Spooky, tense and at times extremely uncomfortable, Lost Gully Road forces us to see things that we might otherwise not believe are there, and to experience up close the subjectivity of what it feels like to live through the incomprehensible. (Alexandra Heller-Nicholas)
|
LOST GULLY ROAD tells the story of Lucy, a directionless young woman who travels to a secluded cottage in the forest to wait for her sister. With no television and little communication to the outside world she spends her days alone and drinking to pass the time. That is, until her unexpected host decides to keep her company…
|
Starring Adele Perovic, John Brumpton, Jane Clifton and Eloise Mignon
Written by Donna McRae & Michael Vale, DOP Laszlo Baranyai, Production Designer Michael Vale, Editor Shannon Michaelas, Sound Designer Gemma Stack, Composers Dave Graney & Clare Moore, Producer Liz Baulch, Producer Donna McRae, Directed by Donna McRae
Contact here
80 mins, colour.