Hounds of Love: Horror Behind Closed Doors
About two thirds of the way through the new Australian horror film Hounds of Love, a door is closed, screams are heard and the shot fades to black. In this scene there is no explicit violence, and for the majority of the film the violence is off-screen and implied, yet my heartbeat must've been about to explode out of my chest. When the scene had finished, the blood pumping around my ears gone, only then did I notice that just to my right, a few seats down, a woman in the cinema was weeping, stifling back tears. That's how much of an impact this film had without showing any violence. Hounds of Love is the debut film by Australian director Ben Young, not that you'd know it was his first time with this terrifying little film, about the kidnapping of a young girl by a serial killer couple in the suburbs of Perth. The cinematography and acting are all brilliant, with the central three performances of Ashleigh Cummings, ostensible victim, and Emma Booth and Stephen Curry as th...