Seeking retribution for a past crime, a group of young friends invade a man’s home and set out to fake his suicide. When their plan is bungled secrets and lies are exposed that force the group to question each other’s motives.
Over the years I haven’t really rated Aussie films too highly, but this year I have been extremely impressed with what’s been hitting our screens. BLAME is the latest Aussie film to be released filmed in the Perth Hills back in February 2010 in what was the hottest and driest summer on record so not only having to battle with the heat the cast and crew also had to battle with a 20 day shooting schedule which for a 90minute film is no small feat.
The film BLAME centres around five friends who violently attack a man in his country house to basically perform the perfect murder but unfortunately the well calculated ‘suicide’ doesn’t go to plan and the five end up questioning each other’s motives. Now for starters seeing a plot like that does tweak my interest, the fact it was shot in Perth tweaks it even more and the talented cast pulled me into the cinema that early Thursday morning back in May, but for the 90 minutes that played out on on screen I was hoping for much, much more.
The cast is really what works in the film, Damien de Montemas (Secret Life of Us) who plays Bernard a music teacher who is violently attacked by the five, brings a raw talent to the screen. Damien gets hit, gagged, tied up, gassed and basically became a punching bag for the entirety of the film and to full credit he pulls it off with massive amounts of ease. Sophie Lowe (Blessed) who plays the quiet but rather nasty Natalie who’s insane cuteness with a hint of the mischievous will keep you guessing and Ashley Zukerman (TV’s RUSH) who plays her boyfriend Anthony pulls of the role extremely well also, but the standout for me is Kestie Morassi who we saw a few years ago in the Aussie hit ‘Wolf Creek’ who plays the role of Cate, the big sister to Alice who sadly took her life with an overdose of sleeping pills and in which the five are trying to commit the perfect murder for, but what Kestie brings to this role is impressive every time she was on the screen she just shined and you could really see what she was going through and this might sound corny but it was all in her ‘eyes’ and yeah just damn sensational.
What lets BLAME down though are a couple of things, I really didn’t enjoy the first half of the film it was to slowly paced which caused me to get slightly bored, one of the actors performances was absolutely shocking and unfortunately he didn’t recover for the entirety of the film but.. And yes there is a but… the third act was brilliant, the music in the film was fantastic as most of you know I’m a sucker for strings and the suspense well was a winner! So you take your negatives with the positives and you have a pretty good film and for this a debut feature film for director Michael John Henry, seriously good luck personally he has a bit to go but definitely has some talent and I do look forward to seeing his next Thriller.
BLAME is now showing exclusively at Luna Leederville and Ace Cinemas in Midland. I give BLAME 3 out of 5.
You can check out my Interview with Damien de Montemas and Ashley Zukerman here and very soon my interview with Director Michael John Henry and as always head over to the trailer page to see more.