Suburban Mayhem

Icon Film Distribution 2006

R4 DVD

I missed this film when it first came out but now I wonder why it didn’t receive wider promotion. It may have something to do with this being one of the bleakest, most antisocial films in a long time. It will make you uncomfortable because it is so plausible. It takes you on a downhill ride from juvenile delinquency to full-on criminal behaviour, but because this behaviour was tolerated in the early days it is too late to stop it now.

Katrina is a little girl growing up with her younger brother and her hardworking Dad. Her mother is a drug addict and only turns up when she needs money, until Katrina’s Dad tells her never to come back. Katrina and her brother grow up wild and become neighbourhood nuisances, but her doting Dad seems unable to control either of his kids. By the time Katrina reaches 19 she has a baby, a sort-of boyfriend, and an ability to control men by persuasion or sex. She is amoral, totally self-centred and uncontrollable. She is well known to the police but they are powerless to do anything about her unless she commits a major crime, and she is too clever for that.

Then the first blow falls. Her beloved little brother is put in prison for life for a murder carried out during a botched holdup. Although Katrina believes she can get her brother off the life sentence if her father will admit to sexually molesting his son, Dad refuses to do this. The relationship between Katrina and her Dad sours although this is probably as much to do with Katrina not being able to control her father as well as she can control other men. In a belated attempt to try to instil some sort of values into her, her Dad threatens to cut off the money he has been giving her “for the baby” – money that has actually been supporting her drug habit and partygoing lifestyle. Increasingly Katrina is leaving her baby with her father, Rusty (her parttime boyfriend, who seems to genuinely care for her) or even with a casual friend.

The second blow falls when she finds that Child Welfare is looking for her and is thinking of taking the baby off her. In Katrina’s increasingly selfish and drug-affected mind this is because she has been betrayed by everyone, not through any fault of hers. She is forming a plan. She needs money to try to get her brother out of prison and so she, Rusty, her brother and the baby can run away and find a place of their own. There is only one way to get the money – her father must die.

Katrina by now appears to have lost touch with reality, but she still has her ability to control men and she finds a likely murderer / scapegoat in a local retarded lad who will do her bidding for sex. He was her brother’s best friend (he also took part in the robbery) and she plays on this friendship to persuade him to carry out the murder. The stage is now set for a dreadful finale where things do not turn out as she intended.

Emily Barclay turns in a brilliant performance as Katrina. Katrina’s rapid mood swings are well-depicted and she conveys Katrina’s self-centred manipulative personality perfectly. There are quality supporting actors and actresses, and the whole film is tightly constructed and never flags. The characters are all familiar suburban types and this is what makes the film so chilling - that one person gone wrong could cause so much mayhem in so many ordinary lives.

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This review will appear in Volume 3 No. 4 of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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