Film Review: Rabbit

Locally produced, this is derivative and uneven and yet, somehow, that oddly works in its favour, as we veer from psychological family/character drama to backwoods eeriness to sinisterly unethical medical shenanigans to some intense horror.

Maude (Clemens) is an Australian medical student in Germany who’s haunted by a recurring nightmare in which she runs through a forest and is eventually caught by some scary figures. Maude has a twin sister named Cleo (also Clemens) who’s been missing for a year, and after experiencing a major realisation to do with the psychic link that always (according to the movies) exists between twins, she faints and then returns home. And cue a glimpse of her looking uncomfortable at Adelaide Airport.

Teaming up with Cleo’s fiancée Ralph (Alex Russell) and Henry (Jonny Pasvolsky), a troubled detective, Maude eventually winds up in the countryside (seemingly somewhere around Murray Bridge) and in a caravan park where a veritable army of weirdos gather (creepy lady with dog, slow-witted girl who knows secrets, and so on), several of whom Maude remembers from her dream/vision/warning. And suddenly we cut to a red screen that mightn’t have been out of place in one of horror maestro Dario Argento’s ‘70s pics or even Gaspar Noé’s I Stand Alone or Irreversible, Michael Darren’s musical score swells, and the film, shall we say, goes off on a tangent.

With a plot guaranteed to divide audiences and more than a little improbability later into the action, this is certainly a hard movie to get a handle on at times. Yet Clemens is fine in two roles, Belgian player Veerle Baetens is memorable as Nerida and there are plenty of ominous moments greatly helped by ever-spooky old Adelaide.

Rated MA. Rabbit screens at the Mercury Cinema on Tuesday September 11 at 10.45am and Sunday September 16 at 4.00pm.