Scare Campaign (2016)

I can count the number of Australian horror films that I’ve personally really enjoyed on my fingers (um...The Loved Ones...The Babadook...I'm sure there are others) so as soon as this started rolling and I heard the accents and recognised one of the actors from old iselect adverts, I’ll admit that my hopes weren’t high. In a twist more shocking than anything in the movie itself, I had a good time with Scare Campaign!

It follows the cast and crew of a hidden camera "pranked ya!" style scare show, who need to up their game to keep up with the torture porn going viral through the deep web. The message is pretty clear - the media isn’t any sicker than the shit kids come up with on their own - and has been done, but there’s a lightheartedness and freshness in how it plays. They aren’t afraid of twists and turns, and rarely in a way that feels convoluted - it works with their grand narrative. The acting is pretty uniformly decent, from the sleazy guy at the helm to the girls playing the “scream queens”, one of whom was recently in The Visit, and a cameo from Sigrid Thornton, and hell, even the iselect guy is pretty great. 

Where it fell down for me? I think that, as a twist connoisseur, they telegraphed the final one way too early for it to play out with satisfaction. It rendered the last act of the movie a little weak on impact, and I don’t think it was just my numbness from overexposure to horror movies. I also thought that most of the minor roles could have been fleshed out more, although I understand how it could have easily overwhelmed things. Definitely got a kick out of recognising Angus Sampson’s voice beneath the leader of the Masked Freaks - he’s not credited, but that’s definitely a distinctive voice in there.

Rating: 6/10 - A decent rating for a surprisingly successful movie. It’s simple, but effective, and it does what it sets out to do well.