After a girls' school trip to Hanging Rock in Victoria on Valentine's Day 1900, three students and a teacher go missing. The film follows the events leading up to, during and after the disappearance.
Almost straight away it is clear that this film differs from the norm. The soft lighting, softer acting and the eerie flute-based score all combine to conjure a truly unsettling opening. The way that the girls talk and act seems almost robotic and makes them seem un-relatable and thus the world in which they inhabit seems other-worldly. I could quite easily see people laughing at the way everyone seems to act in the film (I did to begin with) as they all seem so distant and thoroughly amazed by anything and everything around them. However, as the film progresses it is obvious that the entire mood of the film is suited to their soft speech and fairy-like actions.
This film is certainly not a horror film as such, in that it doesn't contain the expected elements required of most genre-buffs and will definitely not satisfy the gore-hounds out there. What it does do however is unsettle in the extreme, in thatas it is rarely an enjoyable film to watch, with the events it portrays being unpleasant and the way it presents them disorientating. It displays subtle elements of horror in this fashion, and without using shock-tactics it still remains frightening.
 
The build up to the incident introduces the characters and settings and is strange enough, but it is once the girls get to the rock that the true weirdness arises and the actual disappearance is a disturbing sequence of events that remains with you throughout the rest of the film. The reamining parts concern efforts to discover what happened on the rock and although many questions are asked, none are ever really answered. This however only adds to the disquieting nature of the whole film and any answer would have ruined the ending. (It is interesting to note that Joan Lindsay, the author of the original book actually wrote an ending but didn't include it at the last minute. This was a good idea, because on reading the ending it most definitely ruins the ambiguity of the open-ending.)
The acting is slightly off-kilter from everyone, (I particularly enjoyed Dominic Guard's performance) but this is clearly intended and doesn't mar the film to any extent, the cinematography is vast and makes use of beautiful locations, including Hanging Rock itself which is a breathtaking natural phenomenon. Weir definitely achieved a dreamlike sensation with the direction of the film and his technique certainly evokes a sense of confusion, along with a fascination for the events and characters.
Definitely not for everyone's tastes, and not a true horror film, but certainly an unsettling experience and a genuinely artful piece of filmmaking.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 1975
DIRECTOR: Peter Weir
WRITING CREDITS: Joan Lindsay, Cliff Green
GENRE: Drama, Mystery
CAST: Rachel Roberts, Vivean Gray, Helen Morse
COUNTRY: Australia
RUNTIME: 115 min
RATING: 7/10
Picnic at Hanging Rock Website/IMDB Click here
Picnic at Hanging Rock Trailer
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