This HBO Max Thriller Classic Is Praised by Mike Flanagan as “Ethereal, Surreal, Hypnotic”
We, as a society, have a collective fear of the unknown. The absence of answers or explanations has the very real potential to eat us alive. As humans, we are programmed to gravitate toward certainty and predictability. Yet, both are often in short supply in this wild world of ours.
Filmmakers with a keen understanding of that core human tendency have used it as a supremely effective cinematic trope. Both The Thing and The Blair Witch Project weaponize the unknown, putting viewers through the wringer as seeds of paranoia blossom into full-blown panic.
Before either of the previously mentioned films got under our skin with more questions than answers, director Peter Weir did a number on cinephiles with his dreamlike period thriller Picnic at Hanging Rock. The film is universally celebrated by those who have endured it. Among the picture’s fans is one Mike Flanagan. The Doctor Sleep director previously critiqued the film on Letterboxd, raving about its numerous merits.
Fanagan’s review reads, in part: “Peter Weir’s second film is an ethereal, surreal, hypnotic experience. The story involves three girls and their teacher vanishing without a trace on a school outing to an ancient volcanic rock formation, but it is not the docudrama one might expect. Weir’s film is instead a bottomless mystery that plays out like a faintly remembered dream.”
The story plays our like this:
In the early 1900s, Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert) attends a girls’ boarding school in Australia. One Valentine’s Day, the school’s typically strict headmistress (Rachel Roberts) treats the girls to a picnic field trip to an unusual but scenic volcanic formation called Hanging Rock. Despite rules against it, Miranda and several other girls venture off. It’s not until the end of the day that the faculty realizes the girls and one of the teachers (Vivean Gray) have disappeared mysteriously.
Weir helmed the picture from a screenplay by Cliff Green. Green adapted the script from the 1967 Joan Lindsay novel of the same name. The novel purports to be based on real events, which certainly adds to the mystique, yet the proceedings are actually a work of fiction.
If all of this talk about the film has you eager to experience Picnic at Hanging Rock for yourself, you can presently do so on HBO Max.
That is just about all that we’ve got for you, for the time being, dear reader. Make sure to stay tuned to Dread Central in the very near future for more radical recommendations from your favorite filmmakers in the genre space.
Categorized: News
