By Tristan Bishop
When we think of genre film from Australia we tend to think of arid outback conditions and the brutal ways of living they can engender – a long tradition of films, from Nicholas Roeg’s Walkabout (1970) to Russell Mulcahy’s Razorback (1984), from Mad Max to Wolf Creek, film-makers have used the huge swathes of open land to their advantage, often with themes of culture clash, as outsiders literally struggle to survive in a sometimes lawless wilderness. The Passage (somewhat blandly changed from its original title, Lemon Tree Passage, which to be fair sounds more like a coming-of-age tale than a horror film), takes a different approach, being an exploration of a real (sub)urban myth set in a populated area of New South Wales (Lemon Tree Passage being the name of the town where the story occurs), and the familiar ‘Ozploitation’ themes of isolation and outsiders vs. locals are jettisoned in favour of what is, at heart, an old-fashioned small-town ghost story.
Three American teens, Maya (Jessica Tovey of Home & Away fame), Amelia (Pippa Black, of Neighbours fame) and Amelia’s brother Toby (Tim Pocock – aka the young Scott Summers in X-Men : Origins) are backpacking in Australia. They meet locals Oscar (Andrew Ryan) and Geordie (Tom Phillipps – another Neighbours alumnus) who offer them a place to crash. After the group do the standard young-people-in-a-horror-film stuff – drinking beer, smoking weed, flirting hideously, they begin to tell ghost stories. Oscar starts to tell them about a certain road in the town of Lemon Tree Passage, where legend has it that a motorcyclist had a fatal crash, and that he now haunts the road, and is visible as a spooky light to anyone who drives down the road above a certain speed. Of course, being intoxicated young people, they decide to check for themselves, and, lo and behold, the spooky light is visible. Visible to everyone but Maya, that is, who instead develops a nosebleed. However not everyone is convinced, thinking that the spooky light might well just be a broken street light, and in a fit of drunken stupidity, Oscar elects to stand in the dark next to where the light appears and film it as the others drive past. However, when they do this, the light is visible to everyone but Oscar, who suddenly vanishes. As the others rally together to try and find him, they (eventually) come face-to-face with the true nature of the haunting at Lemon Tree Passage.
The idea of using a real life local ghost story for a film is an intriguing one for sure – especially one as odd as this, so I was hoping for a tale rich in local colour and atmosphere. Unfortunately the local angle turns out to a bit under-cooked – As mentioned above, Australia has a long tradition of genre film which plays on the landscapes and myths of the country, so, whilst in some ways it can be seen as a refreshing change from the norm, in other ways, aside from a few accents, this could be any standard US horror film, and that seems like a shame. This is exacerbated by more than half of the characters being ‘American’ (the actors are actually all Australian) – a totally pointless decision as there’s never any element of culture clash, aside from a scene in which the Aussies teach the Americans to speak Australian (apparently you need to swear more!). We’re used to international productions dropping US actors in to boost the changes of sales in The States, of course, but seeing as the actors themselves aren’t even American, this left me scratching my head.
Thankfully the film does have merit beyond this – it looks great for one, as the production values are way more impressive than you would expect from a small-scale ghost story – including some very impressive CGI effects. Director/co-writer/editor David James Campbell (making his first feature here, after working in commercials and shorts) has an obvious talent for a scare too, and there are a handful of moments here that I’ll admit gave me an unexpected shiver (watching it alone in the dark probably helped too), but, unfortunately, as the story unravels, so does the film, and by the end I went from scratching my head to being disappointed with what one can only assume was supposed to be a shocking denouement, but actually turned out to feel a bit cheap. Nonetheless, there are certainly highlights along the way, and The Passage should be commended for them, it’s just frustrating that it falls so close to being something genuinely interesting.
The Passage is released to DVD on 5th October, from Metrodome.