Over the years, so many films have utilized the Australian landscape as a moody, atmospheric backdrop. It's such a gorgeous place steeped in mysterious natural history that filmmakers hailing from down under have no choice but to exploit its vast photogenic qualities - and they'd be silly not to use it in an attempt to give their work added visual gravitas.
Megan Riakos' debut feature "Crushed" is no exception, setting its story in the beautiful Mudgee wine region of New South Wales. Our protagonist, Ellia, returns home after her father is crushed and killed by a barrel in the family's winery under suspicious circumstances. Soon, her mother becomes the prime suspect in the murder investigation, and Ellia finds herself embroiled in an ever-deepening web of mystery, tragedy and family secrets.
The film starts off in a slow burn, with lingering shots and scenes that last that little bit longer than they should. Soon, we realize that there's something off about the pacing for a film that's billed as a thriller. We need to get to the meat of the story, and quick, but it's not happening. We spend time with Ellia, who drinks wine. A lot of wine.
The performances reveal themselves as uneven - at best melodramatic, and at worst amateurish. The film focuses in on these characters as a family, but we never feel convinced that they have real chemistry. To work, this film desperately needed believable familial interaction between the actors, and it's just not there. Ellia doesn't even seem particularly phased by the fact that her father has been crushed to death, but perhaps we're meant to attribute that to her being numbed by her constant wine- guzzling.
Between swigs, the plot devolves into Ellia's less-than-riveting investigation of rotting wheat and poisoned soil - and how that may have a connection to her father's death - mostly consisting of internet searches on a fake version of Google. She questions a line of insultingly incompetent sleazy men and the story gets sillier and sillier until it almost implodes during a scene where Ellia uses her seductive feminine wiles to extract information from a local drunkard about the kind of farming soil he laid at the winery. Oh yeah baby, tell me 'bout that hot, hot soil.
Speaking of drunkards... did I mention Ellia drinks a lot of wine?
STOP DRINKING!
Anyway, the plot reaches its denouement in a way that is, frankly, predictable and cringeworthy in its execution. It's unbelievably melodramatic and solidifies the feeling that this two hour affair would have been far more comfortable on midday TV, rather than blown up to a big screen feature film.
"Crushed" takes itself too seriously, and I can't help but think injecting a little Aussie humor may have helped. It's hard to accept this film and its dreary tone without some levity. It's just not very good - but not bad enough to recommend for the midnight movie crowd because it doesn't go far enough in any direction. It's just dull and unengaging.
If I could think of a couple of positives, they would be that it's shot decently (if somewhat artlessly) and that the score is decent, but unremarkable and overdramatic for what's happening on screen. There is potential talent inside the crew of "Crushed", but this film is a stumble perhaps hindered by its financial limitations. I guess as an Australian, I should be grateful that anyone is able to get a film off the ground at all in the country. For that alone, congratulations is in order, since that's more than half of the filmmaking battle these days.
But that doesn't mean I can't hope for a higher standard. Gems like "The Babadook" and "Wolf Creek" are painfully few and far between, but their very existence means IT IS possible to make genre films of international quality in Australia. As it stands, we're stuck with limited budgets and resources, and our industry will continue to wallow in the mud if "Crushed" is anything to go by.
