Uncompromising in its brutality, Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale tackles a completely different type of real-life horror than the director’s 2014 feature debut, The Babadook. A savage treatise on the evils of man - both the species and the gender - The Nightingale is a gauntlet of violence and terror that also happens to be one of this year’s most powerful films. Buoyed by blistering performances from Aisling Franciosi and Baykali Ganambarr, Kent’s sophomore effort is as enthralling as it is difficult to watch. Minor spoilers ahead…

My screening of The Nightingale saw no fewer than three walkouts. Unrelenting in its cruelty and numerous depictions of rape and violence, Jennifer Kent’s second feature-length film is incredibly difficult to stomach. While it could be unfairly compared to the exploitation-era rape/revenge movies of the past, The Nightingale forgoes the feckless sensationalism of films such as I Spit on Your Grave and The Last House on the Left, and instead holds a darkly sober mirror that reflects the horrors of colonialism, racism, and misogyny. Uninterested in the exaggerated bloodletting and fantasy of your typical revenge yarn, Kent focuses on a grotesque hyper-realism that amplifies the emotional impact of the film’s brutal displays of suffering: The Nightingale is graphic and extreme, but it never veers into schlock or excess.

A particularly dark time in Australian history, the early-to-mid 1800s were riddled with colonialist atrocities, primarily perpetrated by England’s organized and state-sanctioned efforts to wipe out the aboriginal peoples. Utilizing this harrowing backdrop and setting its stage in the British colony of Van Diemen’s Land (present-day Tasmania) in 1825, The Nightingale centers around an Irishwoman named Clare (Aisling Franciosi, in an absolutely gut-wrenching performance), an indentured convict under the employ of the sadistic Captain Hawkins (Sam Claflin). Serving her time at a military outpost as little more than a slave, Clare spends her evenings singing for the lecherous troops and the monstrous captain, whose first act of the film is to violently rape her in his private quarters. It’s the first of the film’s many protracted rape scenes, which Kent deftly strips of any semblance of titillation, using them instead as a head-on confrontation with the savagery of misogyny and toxic masculinity. While Clare’s station is miserable and full of suffering and degradation, her saving grace comes in the form of her family: a husband that Hawkins has reluctantly allowed her to marry, and an infant child. However, after Hawkins reneges on an offer of freedom, spewing bile and possessives, Clare’s only haven is upended and immolated by multiple acts of unbearable violence and cruelty. When she awakens, battered and stripped of everything she holds dear, Clare embarks on a journey of a singular and searing intent: revenge.