Wake in Fright (1971)

1971 | Australia | Ted Kotcheff | ★★★★★

Based on Kenneth Cook's Australian outback-set novel, Ted Kotcheff's booze, sweat, and testosterone-soaked Wake in Fright is a visceral, slow-burn waking nightmare of a film, driven by several memorably full-blooded performances and some decidedly brilliant editing.

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"A middle-class schoolteacher, stuck in a government-enforced teaching post in an arid backwater, stops off in the mining town of Bundanyabba on his way home for the Christmas holidays. Discovering a local gambling craze that may grant him the financial independence to move back to Sydney for good, the opportunity proves irresistible. But the bad decisions are just beginning and a reliance on local standards of hospitality in 'the Yabba' may take him on a path darker than ever expected." Eureka

See also:
Stotty's 1970s Favourites

Top of the Lake: China Girl (2017)

2017 | Australia | Jane Campion | ★★★★

Jane Campion's Top of the Lake: China Girl is an outlandish, hugely entertaining six-part television drama (a sequel to 2013's Top of the Lake), featuring a seductive mix of dry, absurdist black humour, over-the-top, faintly ridiculous melodrama, and bold, confrontational sexual politics.

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"Top of the Lake: China Girl is a crime mystery story that finds Detective Robin Griffin recently returned to Sydney and trying to rebuild her life. When the body of an Asian girl washes up on Bondi Beach, there appears little hope of finding the killer, until Robin discovers 'China Girl' didn't die alone. Robin looks to the investigation to restore herself, but her problems are personal. Haunted by a daughter given up at birth, Robin desperately wants to find her, yet dreads revealing the truth of her conception. But her search to discover 'China Girl's' identity will take her into the city's darkest recesses and closer than she could have imagined to the secrets of her own heart." 2entertain

Top of the Lake (2013)

2013 | Australia / New Zealand | Jane Campion | ★★★

Jane Campion's New Zealand-set Top of the Lake is a well-crafted and generally diverting but seldom credible-feeling six-part mystery-thriller, driven by Elisabeth Moss's sensitive, soft-spoken performance and Adam Arkapaw's oft breath-taking photography.

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"A 12 year old girl walks chest deep into the freezing waters of a South Island lake in New Zealand. She is five months pregnant and won’t say who the father is. Then she disappears. Robin Griffin is a gutsy but inexperienced detective called in to investigate. But as Robin becomes more and more obsessed with the search for Tui, she slowly begins to realise that finding Tui is tantamount to finding herself - a self she has kept well hidden. Set against one of the most amazing and untouched landscapes left on the planet, Top of the Lake is a powerful and haunting story about our search for happiness where the dream of paradise attracts its dark twin, the fall." 2entertain

The Kettering Incident (2016)

2016 | Australia | Vicki Madden & Vincent Sheehan | ★★★

Starring Elizabeth Debicki, Madden and Sheehan's The Kettering Incident is a for-the-most-part gripping, well-crafted, and beautifully located mystery thriller that unfortunately falls apart once its science-fiction underbelly is exposed.

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"Set on the isolated island of Tasmania, The Kettering Incident is a tense, gripping thriller following one woman's journey to find the truth about her past. Dr Anna Macy was just a child when her best friend Gillian mysteriously disappeared. The two girls had been playing in ancient woodland on the edge of town when Anna saw strange lights in the sky, accompanied by a high-pitched noise. Hours after, Anna was found alone. Fifteen years later Anna returns to her home town of Kettering to find that the rumours still persist about what really happened to the girls that night - from Anna killing Gillian to alien abduction - so when 17 year old Chloe Holloway also disappears Anna is compelled to discover what really happened to Gillian." Spirit Entertainment