Mark Kermode reviews Picnic At Hanging Rock (1975) | BFI Player 

And Monsieur Costello is a haunting and hypnotic experience like no other in cinema.

The director is amazing. He Also made Gallipoli 1981 and Witness 1985.

Same , each time I see it

yeah the fact that Edith calls to Miranda like six times without a response is well creepy. such an effective horror scene and so masterfully done. terrifying without using jump shocks or gore.

@@TheWaynos73 just thinking about that scene now gives me chills. It’s otherworldly but in a multitude of ways

Picnic made me really creeped out by the Australian bush when i was a kid. seriously. The idea that an unseen force could lure you away to your doom and could come at any time would put the chills up me any time we would go hiking or camping. Even as an adult years later i still feel unsettled, after learning of stories of Yowies and Quinkins and other aboriginal bush folklore. The bush is an uneasy place and not a place i would want to be lost in.

@@TheWaynos73 Not by chance there is a military word:Ambush.

its a mystery, there's not really any horror in it, and certainly no gore

@@DaveWhoa there’s s hint at horror in some later scenes

Perth native here. Did you learn about the history of Rottnest Island when you were there? I and many others believe that it contributes to the eeriness of the place.

@@Investigate_Mermaids Hello. My (Australian) girlfriend of the time told me it was once a prison colony - and we did visit a museum there that showed the history f the place. In fact, if I remember properly, the hotel we were staying at was once a prison/barracks. You could definitely feel something there. she said the same. I read afterwards there's a satanic church there :/

Lindsey had written a final chapter that explains what happened and has the girls following mademoiselle who had turned into a crab into smother dimension in time. The deleted chapter 18.

And The Last Wave. Also hypnotic and horrifying.

Gallipoli is brilliant, if this is a story about young women then Gallipoli is about a group of young men. Witness is brilliant, it's an action film but it's so much more.

Indeed. Unnecessary and undistinguished,

Yep same thought. Some of the "girls" in it looked liked they'd already graduated.... from University..... a while back....definitely a bit long in the tooth. You loose the sense of mystery and innocence by casting them as women. So you have the idea of casting a group of women in their mid to late 20s as the schoolgirls, then you cast an Aboriginal woman as one of the missing girls which totally misses the point of the original story that these are British European characters in a strange unfamiliar new landscape full of mystery which they don't fully understand, it's such a blatant example of how a desire to be more diverse in some cases does more harm than good. Casting Natalie Dormer as a younger headmistress also misses the subtext of the original having this older widow in the original resenting and jealous of these younger girls who've got all their lives and a romances still ahead. The remake is pretty much a rewriting of the book, no sense of mystery, endless back story and terrible dialogue.

the original Mad Max and Wake in Fright are also so brilliantly made. i love our cinema in Australia. we have made some absolute crackers.

You sound like an American. ;-)

@@BrennFilm Impossible, there's irony in my original post.

The Man From Hong Kong is an Australian masterpiece in its own right

Maybe not. Watch librarian review pahr. There was article in old newspaper 1914 that referred to it.

i had visited hanging rock when i was about 12 with my family and yeah, it is a place that makes you feel uneasy. perhaps the memory of the spooky movie didnt help either. we all checked our watches to make sure they hadnt stopped. one of the creepiest moments of the story.

Yes

You were lucky to come back haha.

The film is way too subtle for most Americans ;)

shorse

I still haven't watched the whole thing. Can i possibly request an explainer of the specifics of the loathing, without spoilers?

Fool...

@@paulklee5790 Any recommendations for other films with a haunting sense of mystery, like Francois Ozon's Under the Sand? Especially if Australian.

You must have only ever watched a handful of films then, poor thing