Indie Horror Hall of Fame: Hounds of Love

Recently, I went on a Joy Division kick and when I heard “Atmosphere” the other day, it immediately reminded me of this fantastic Australian thriller from 2017, Hounds of Love, which has haunted me for nearly eight years now. It’s not an easy watch by any means, but writer/director Ben Young does so much more here than just trying to exploit the human horror at the center of this story so that he can shock audiences.

Instead, Hounds of Love is a powerful and moving exploration of the intricacies of human nature that examines the difficulties of overcoming trauma in all its forms and features some of the best performances of the late 2010s to come out of the land down under.

Set in Perth, during December 1987, it’s evident from Hounds of Love’s very first moments — a stunning slow-motion sequence of teenagers playing volleyball while a pair of onlookers watch on from a distance — that Ben Young wants to do something different with his feature film debut. His story follows a couple, John and Evelyn (portrayed by Stephen Curry and Emma Booth), that abduct a young girl walking home from school one day, and we see how that intersects with another teenager named Vicki (Ashleigh Cummings) who is having a difficult time coping with her parents’ recent divorce.

After getting into a fight one night with her mom (Maggie Carter), Vicki sneaks out of the house to meet up with her boyfriend (Harrison Gilbertson) at a party in the neighborhood. Her plans are derailed when she happens to cross paths with John and Evelyn, who offer to sell the young girl some “party favors” to bring to the festivities. But Vicki never makes it to the party, as the deranged lovers end up drugging her, making her their prisoner with the intent of eventually killing her, and dumping her body out in the woods amongst their other victims.

But the longer that Vicki is held captive, the more she begins to realize the power struggle happening between her captors — with John wielding his dominance over Evelyn, whose loneliness and desperation keep her trapped within the confines of their relationship. Vicki, not quite ready to throw in the towel on her horrific predicament, decides to use this to try and divide the couple as their relationship begins to dissolve, as the teen believes that the growing division between them will give her a better shot at gaining her freedom back.

Over the last few decades, many of us genre fans have experienced our fair share of hostage thrillers which means you have to try and bring something new to the table as a storyteller. The fact of the matter is that this is well-worn cinematic territory that’s generally not all that “entertaining” either considering the type of material these stories are often working with. Thankfully, Young sidesteps a lot of needless ugliness in Hounds of Love by crafting a character study that doesn’t rely on shocking violence or tortuous gore, yet still leaves you shaken to your core all the same.

Young’s script digs a little deeper by defying its genre trappings by focusing on the psychological aspects of the story, focusing on the three main women in his story – young Vicki, the equally tortured Evelyn, and Vicki’s mom who has just regained her independence as well after her divorce. The way Young weaves together their respective arcs together is heartbreaking and masterful, celebrating the enduring perseverance of women everywhere through his three very complex female characters.

While Cummings is fantastic as the main protagonist of Hounds of Love, Booth quickly became the most intriguing performer in the film to me, as there’s a deep conflict burning within Evie that even though you hate her for being a co-conspirator with John, you can sense her feelings of loss and jealousy over what she’s personally had to give up in order to support his destructive nature.

She’s lost custody of her children, and she’s torn by the thought that John may have even harmed them, but she knows that he’s dangerous and demented, too. If Evelyn challenges him in any way, she knows there are horrible repercussions awaiting her, leaving Booth’s character just as desperate as the young women that she helps him kidnap and torture.

Because this story is primarily seen through the eyes of Evelyn, who longs to escape from this hellish world that John has her trapped in, Cinematographer Michael McDermott uses shots of airplanes, birds, and other iconography of flight interspersed with images showcasing the drab palette of Australian suburbia during the ‘80s to reflect Evelyn’s conflict and her longing for a different life away from John’s cruelty.

But does Evelyn deserve to be free? That’s not exactly an easy question to answer, and I appreciated that Ben Young doesn’t try to give us any easy answers either when it comes to her character here.

Although the women of Hounds of Love are a huge part of Young’s focus here, Curry gets his own opportunity to shine through his performance as the sadistic John, a character who is as deadly as he is charismatic. Because John himself has no kind of power outside of his home, as he’s bullied by his boss from time to time, and that provides us with an understanding of why John is the way that he is. Young also gives us glimpses of John’s OCD tendencies, whether it’s lining up his smoked cigarettes in his ashtray, or how his buttered toast needs to be placed on his plate by Evelyn in a particular manner. It’s this unrelenting focus that sets the stage for most of John’s misdeeds in the film.

We see that if things aren’t up to John’s perfect standards, that can set him off, making for a volatile situation for Evie and anyone else who happens to get in his way. Curry makes the role uniquely his own, but it did remind me a lot of Michael Rooker in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, another brutal character that you can’t help but be entranced by, murderous intentions and all.

With a lot of the brutality playing off-screen, writer/director Young smartly focuses his efforts on the emotional destruction at play throughout Hounds of Love, making his film a standout amongst many of its peers who are more interested in pushing the boundaries of violence instead of crafting a compelling story with something on its mind. By reinventing the rules of this genre, Hounds of Love showcases how you can build near-intolerable suspense through masterful characterization instead of taking a more gruesome and exploitative approach.

Which brings us back to Joy Division’s “Atmosphere.” One of the reasons that Hounds of Love is such an agonizing watch is due to the fact that the story is loosely based on real-life events. It was in 1986 when a young woman reported to police in Perth that she had been kidnapped by a local couple named David and Catherine Birnie, and had narrowly escaped their clutches. “Atmosphere” factors into the film’s finale in such a beautifully profound way that it almost gives the song a whole new meaning through its use here and I can remember just sitting there in my seat weeping the first time I watched the film.

I was also fortunate enough to host a Q&A for the film at a screening in Los Angeles in late 2017, and as I stood in the back of the theater while the “Atmosphere” sequence played out, tears began welling up in my eyes once again, and I was a little choked up when I had to start my conversation with Ben Young that night (which was admittedly a bit embarrassing). It is just such a powerful moment that really resonated with me.

So, here I am, nearly 8 years later, and Hounds of Love has forever changed how I hear “Atmosphere” and I just love whenever a film can take an existing piece of music and completely transform my connection to it from that moment forward. That’s when you know you’ve got something special, much like filmmaker Ben Young’s work in his emotionally devastating debut.