The Thousands

Alexander Pearce has been called Australia’s first serial killer, murdering and cannibalising his fellow convicts from 1822-1824. Jonathan Auf Der Heide’s low-budget psychodrama is the most bleakly lyrical of other recent films. Gorgeously shot on location in Tasmania and Victoria’s Otway Ranges, it makes the bush seem as empty and alien as it must have seemed to the British.

Eight convicts escape and become lost on Tasmania’s rugged west coast. They fight among themselves and form sectarian alliances – some men are English, others Gaelic-speaking Scots and Irish. Their ultimate resort to cannibalism appears driven by personal enmity as much as hunger, and each remaining escapee becomes increasingly paranoid that he’s next.

It’s slow-paced and at times difficult to watch – wags are calling it Van Tedious Land. But I liked the oppressive dread Van Diemen’s Land builds, the way it asks viewers to read meaning into small moments, and the way it refuses easy explanations of horrifying acts. Oscar Redding’s portrayal of Pearce is enigmatic, especially his poetic voiceovers in his native Gaelic. He’s not presented as a bloodthirsty psychopath, but rather a contemplative man who understands better than the others who he is.