Hounds of Love

What makes a per­son kill anoth­er per­son? Attempt­ing to answer that unan­swer­able ques­tion is a sport for film­mak­ers, as they impose pop-psy­cho­log­i­cal motives on the sick-mind­ed mur­der­ers at the cen­tre of their sto­ries. With his direc­to­r­i­al debut, Aus­tralian actor Ben Young choos­es to tell that all-too-com­mon tale from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive, name­ly that of a killer’s com­plic­it girl­friend. The results are murki­er and more pro­found and more mov­ing than expected.

Open­ing with slow-motion shots of the peace­ful, sun-drenched streets of Perth cir­ca 1987, Young imme­di­ate­ly estab­lish­es an atmos­phere of unease that he main­tains through­out the film. The idea that sick­en­ing hor­rors can occur right below our noses is cen­tral to the ser­i­al killer genre, and Young tact­ful­ly returns to this idea as a way to height­en the mood.

This sense of hair-trig­ger ten­sion reach­es its peak when he decides to divert his cam­era into the house where John (Stephen Cur­ry) and Eve­lyn White (Emma Booth) cap­ture and sex­u­al­ly tor­ture young girls. Through the eyes of Vic­ki (Ash­leigh Cum­mings), Young depicts the every­day life of the cou­ple, from their domes­tic rit­u­als to the emo­tion­al dynam­ics of their strange relationship.

A grip­ping and nau­seous sense of real­ism per­vades through the movie. From her first encounter with the cou­ple onwards, Vicki’s future remains uncer­tain. She is not only sub­ject to her tor­tur­ers’ will, but also to chance and, to a vary­ing degree, her own actions. Despite her shack­les, the young girl soon under­stands that she does have some psy­cho­log­i­cal pow­er over her tor­menters, and espe­cial­ly over Evelyn.

In an agile move away from genre con­ven­tion, Young refus­es to depict these extreme­ly vio­lent peo­ple as devoid of human sen­ti­ment. Vic­ki observes them and their veneer of per­fect (if dement­ed) har­mo­ny reveals its cracks in sub­tle but unde­ni­able ways. Eve­lyn is in charge of serv­ing break­fast, tak­ing care of the house and of Vic­ki dur­ing the day, and can only see her kids from a pre­vi­ous mar­riage in a pic­ture. John, mean­while, is always the one assign­ing tasks and decid­ing what mea­sures to take. Rather than being com­plete­ly com­plic­it, Eve­lyn is most­ly sub­mis­sive and jeal­ous. John may seem over-con­fi­dent, but his pre­car­i­ous finances make him vul­ner­a­ble and he can lose his temper.

Young’s act­ing back­ground shines through in his direc­tion of the per­form­ers. Booth’s sub­tle facial expres­sions pro­gres­sive­ly reveal the pain and despair that have caused Eve­lyn to stick by John’s side and even take part in his per­verse games. Vic­ki picks up on Evelyn’s mood swings, but can’t let her men­tal process­es show, and Cummings’s abil­i­ty to con­nect with her fel­low per­form­ers allows her to main­tain that bal­ance between intel­li­gi­bil­i­ty and enigma.

Increas­ing­ly torn between her fear­ful despair and her instinc­tu­al dis­gust, Eve­lyn becomes the unlike­ly cen­tral pro­tag­o­nist. By focussing on the female char­ac­ters and their rela­tion­ship, Young vol­un­tar­i­ly makes the vio­lent and con­trol­ling man a sec­ondary ele­ment as a way to bet­ter explore the con­se­quences of his nefar­i­ous influ­ence. Eve­lyn doesn’t become a per­fect fem­i­nist hero­ine, yet by being inglo­ri­ous, her sto­ry all the bet­ter high­lights the men­ace of tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty and misog­y­nis­tic ideals.