Here are some of the best Australian horror movies to check out and watch.
Talk to Me
When a group of friends discover how to conjure spirits using an embalmed hand, they become hooked on the new thrill, until one of them goes too far.
Talk to Me really feels like a bit of a modern benchmark for Australian horror - confident, tight;y controlled, and unsettling without trying too hard to be clever about it, where the hype actually feels justified.
The Babadook
A single mother and her child fall into a deep well of paranoia when an eerie children's book titled "Mister Babadook" manifests in their home.
The Babadook is one of those films that people turned into memes for a while, but underneath that it’s actually properly uncomfortable in a slow, stubborn persistent way, with the horror all about the pressure building in the background of everyday life until it starts to feel inescapable.
Wolf Creek
Three backpackers stranded in the Australian outback are plunged inside a hellish nightmare of insufferable torture by a sadistic psychopathic local.
Wolf Creek has a very specific kind of unpleasantness to it, which makes it quite grimy which makes it hard to forget, and is one of those films you only ever need to watch once, but you still end up remembering it years later anyway.
Lake Mungo
Strange things start happening after a girl is found drowned in a lake.
Lake Mungo is one of the quietest horror films I know, where a lot of people say nothing is going on, but underneath the surface it actually has a lot going on if you let your mind wander, and while it barely tries to scare you in a traditional sense, I think that is what makes it so effective, if that's your jam.
The Loved Ones
When Brent turns down his classmate Lola's invitation to the prom, she concocts a wildly violent plan for revenge.
Deliberately uncomfortable. and kind of hard to look away from even when you want to with an energy to it that makes it memorable in a very specific, but slightly exhausting way.
Relic
A daughter, mother and grandmother are haunted by a manifestation of dementia that consumes their family's home.
This is more restrained than a lot of people expect, and a film that just slowly tightens its grip and lets the atmosphere do all the work, and I respect how patient it is.
The Tunnel
An investigation into a government cover-up leads to a network of abandoned train tunnels deep beneath the heart of Sydney, and as a journalist and her crew hunt for the story it quickly becomes clear the story is hunting them.
The Tunnel is seriously underrated in my view, with that early-2010s found footage energy where everything feels a bit rough but very committed, and while it is far from not perfect, it builds a decent sense of pressure over time - also, abandoned tunnels are just always a bad idea.
Undead
A quaint Australian fishing village is overcome by meteorites that turn its residents into the ravenous undead, leaving a small group of those unharmed to find a way out.
This film doesn’t always land well, but when it does, it’s weirdly entertaining, with a homemade quality to it that I kind of respect even when it’s doing too much, so if you like zombie horror, check this one out as it's a bit crazy and weird, but when it works, it works.
Next of Kin
In a rest home for elderly people, a daughter reads her mother's diary, and soon events that are mentioned in the mother's diary begin to happen to the daughter.
Next of Kin really delivers this constant slow, creeping sense of dread that something isn’t quite right, and it’s the kind of horror that feels more atmospheric and psychological than overt, so instead of jolting you, it kind stays at the edges and just quietly unsettles you.
Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead
A talented mechanic prepares to battle his way through hordes of flesh-eating monsters after his sister is kidnapped on the eve of a zombie apocalypse.
Another zombie horror, and quite a charming one too, which takes a familiar zombie apocalypse setup and just runs with it in a very unpolished, high-energy way, without ever bothering to slow down for too much reflection.
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