The cruelest thing you'll see all week: Killing Ground

The basics of Killing Ground are as old as Deliverance. So, uh, 1972, I suppose? When you’re out in the wilderness, beyond the range of a 911 call, it sure is scary that some psycho could try to get you! In the absence of civilization, there is no check on murderous chaos, right? Dog eat dog. Survival of the fittest. Plenty of movies play on this fear. It’s often crass, but effective. Backcountry and Blue Jay are recent dingy little horror movies to that effect. Wild brought it up in a wonderfully unexpected way. Australia’s brutal contribution was Wolf Creek, a horror movie with an uncompromising serrated edge so effective that it spawned a (not very good) sequel and a TV series (that I have no desire to see).

First-time Australian filmmaker Damien Power revisits the same territory in Killing Ground. It's nothing if not familiar. When you're out in the wilderness, beyond the range of a 911 call, it sure is scary that some psycho could try to get you! But Powers ruthlessly stakes his own claim.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2017/07/28/cruelest-thing-youll-see-week-killing-ground/

https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Ground-Aaron-Pederson/dp/B073XVXXVR/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501290000&sr=8-1&keywords=killing+ground

Damien Power is one to watch. I guess.

I don’t really know how I feel about this movie. It was well filmed, and interesting in terms of the plot structure. When did you notice? I thought it was odd when the family never commented on or noticed their new neighbors but I didn’t think more of it until the daughter ran to the car after getting scared while sitting and reading. At that point I was like “why didn’t she acknowledge them. . . oh their car isn’t there”). I agree that I think it played on the usual “people do stupid things” trope nicely. It’s an unusual situation and there are scary people with guns so I can see the characters making the choices they did.

The scene where we get to watch Australian Hillbilly 1 and 2 deal with the family was. . . it was too much. Which just goes to show, I guess, that you don’t need gore to get to someone. I guess I need to give Pierce credit because he likely did what he accomplished with the scene. It was disturbing and difficult to watch and now I’m sort of depressed. I didn’t even really feel much catharsis when the other couple escaped. Like both of them at the end, I feel used up. Pierce was probably going for that too.

Frankly, the movie is kind of a dick move.

-Tom

I disagree; the ending could have been considerably darker. I wasn’t sure what to expect the whole time, and what I did get surprised me: consequences.

Just saw this and agree with the “dick move” assessment. Although it worked extremely well as a horror movie I would never recommend it to a friend.

This is the actual poster Netflix uses for this movie, that I saw on my screen just now?

image

You know what? Fuck you Netflix. Just … fuck you.