Returning to Australian horror film and Ozploitation cinema debate

Abstract

The three articles in this subsection return to scholarly debates at the core of research into Australian horror movies and Ozploitation cinema. In terms of the former, the horror film remains under-researched in Australian film studies. This is not surprising. On the one hand, since the mid-2000s the Australian film industry has produced a handful of popular, and internationally influential horror movies such as The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014), Daybreakers (Michael and Peter Spierig, 2009), and Wolf Creek (Greg McLean, 2005). On the other hand, the majority of Australian horror films rarely receive critical acclaim, nor are they widely discussed in mainstream film criticism; and for every Wolf Creek, there is a long list of movies such as Red Billabong (Luke Sparke, 2016), The Pack (Nick Robertson, 2015), Me and My Mates vs. The Zombie Apocalypse (Declan Shrubb, 2015), and There's Something in the Pilliga (Dane Millerd, 2014) that disappear into the long-tail of the market. Few local horror movies released each year secure cinema release and the average title circulates in home video markets, and/or subscription and pay-per-download services. As a conceptual category, Australian horror movies emerge at the intersection of cult cinema; Australia-international cinema that can be difficult to evaluate on the basis of cultural value (the setting of Triangle [2009, Christopher Smith] for instance is never specified although Australian actors play characters who speak with American accents); and genre filmmaking long associated with Hollywood-inspired filmmaking. As a consequence, until quite recently the subject has rarely been central to dominant discourses in Australian film studies concerned with distinguishing Australian cinema as a national cinema...