Cassandra

Director Colin Eggleston

Tegan Charles , Tessa Humphries , Dylan O'Neill , Briony Behets , Natalie McCurry , Shane Briant.

Umbrella Entertainment

R4 DVD 2006

Cassandra is a rather impressive Australian Slasher film from the Eighties; it combines the shock of the kill, family intrigues and “evil twins” with psychic premonitions and dream sequences to make a very memorable experience.

It all starts with a rather non descript young girl throwing stones into a lake beside a rather idyllic home in the country, it looks like any Australian home in rural Australia during the 1950s. A car speeds in and out steps a homely sort of woman and a rather strange looking child who's singing the nursery rhyme 'who killed cock robin?' The woman seems agitated and confused. The next scene shows the woman committing suicide via a rather powerful shotgun while the child with a strange demonic voice encourages her to pull the trigger. The girl has by now run towards the house but only finds her now dead mothers corpse and her brother covered with blood.

This is a great start to what is a very intriguing film, we soon learn this is a dream which is haunting Cassandra, the major character of the film. Time and time again the dream returns but she is assured by the woman she assumes is her mother that it is all just a nightmare. But things are not as they seem.

Cassandra’s father is a highly successful photographer who is having an affair with one of his models and Cassandra finds that Libby is pregnant with his child and preparing to leave his wife. Cassandra falls into a semi hypnotic dream state and “sees” Libby’s rather graphic demise. At first the police suspect Cassandra but the story begins to become more complex when she realizes the truth…

It's is quite clear that Colin Eggleston was influenced by American Slasher films of the 1980s but there is something more here than just an Australian Halloween. Eggleston explores the dynamics of a dysfunctional family, creates a lot of tension by misdirection and through the use of an interesting and intelligent plot has created a film which is a lot better than others of the same period. The use of dream sequences, memory flashbacks and the psychic connection between twins helps make this a far more interesting film than we may first suspect. It still works well today and had dated surprisingly well.

The score is very intense and creates a superbly textured mood and for my money what we have here is a very memorable early Australian Slasher. With a high quality release just made available through Umbrella Entertainment hopefully this will now reach a much larger audience.