Some places just seem to attract sadness. In Australian supernatural drama Sweet River, those tragedies tesselate, interwoven and interlocked even as they break everyone involved into fragments.
Hanna (Lisa Kay) is shattered well before she’s first seen heading to the small town of Billins, a middle-of-nowhere sugar cane community with a bitter history. She suspects that her son was the victim of a serial killer who lived and died there, but his body has never been found. That’s why no one can be too harsh when she rolls up, dredging for old memories, heartbroken, furious that the cops have up the hunt. It’s why John (veteran Australian character actor Martin Sacks) and Elenore Drake (Genevieve Lemon) let her stay at a rented property.
Former surf documentary maker Justin McMillan heads a little inland for his narrative feature debut. Visually, Sweet River is another addition to the recent trend of isolated rural horrors like The Dark and the Wicked and Relic to rely on muted, mottled blues, greys, and greens for exteriors, and weatherbeaten greys for the outside world. If anything, it pushes that palette to new extremes, almost becoming a little washed out on the details. For anyone that expects an Australian horror to be all Outback ochres and umbers, the muddy backwoods of the Northern Rivers and Condong cane fields will feel more like American Midwestern horror. But color isn’t central: Cinematographer Tim Tregoning places more emphasis on composition than color, of shadows crossing through openings, doorways, and tracks through the ubiquitous sugar cane fields. Something is lurking in Billins, and Hanna’s quest for closure will inevitably cross its path.
But while some jump scares lurk in the waters of Sweet River, there’s little sense that Hanna is in peril. This is the horror of grief, of not knowing, of not being able to put the past to rest. There are hints of 2007 SXSW favorite Grimm Love in the way the story is about reconstructing the past, as if rebuilding it can somehow liberate you.
The script by Eddie Baroo and Marc Furmie is more subtle at drawing in the supernatural elements than it is at tying the complex and convenient series of sad events that ultimately bind the story together. Yet the performances – most especially Kay’s depiction of Hanna’s utterly distraught desperation, and Sacks perfect as a man worn down by his own pain – anchor the tragedy, even as a quiet eeriness pervades the frame.
Sweet River is available to stream as part of the extended Other Worlds 2020 virtual edition, running through Dec. 13. Passes, ticket packs, individual screening links, and info at www.otherworldsfilmfestival.com.
This article appears in December 11 • 2020.
