Happy Australia Day to our cousins down under.

But it’s not all sunny weather, BBQs and sipping amber nectar in Oz, you know, as you’ll see in the dark supernatural horror Backtrack, which arrives in cinemas this Friday.

The film – in which Adrien Brody plays a psychologist who discovers his patients may or may not be already dead (hint: they are) – follows a great tradition of Australian horror.

To celebrate, here are 10 of the most spooky, sinister, and downright bonkers horror films to come from a land down under.


1. The Babadook

The Film: Poor Amelia (Essie Davis) has a right old time – she’s widowed, has a borderline weirdo six-year-old son, and now some evil spirit has leapt out of the pages of a kids’ book to haunt her mercilessly.



The Monster: A nightmarish figure in the tradition of German expressionism, which is a fancy way of saying a load of horrible black smoke in a top hat.

Scariest Moment: Finding a book on the doorstep has never been so terrifying. Especially considering Amelia burnt it the day before (honestly, they’ll BBQ anything in Oz).

2. Wolf Creek

The Film: An allegedly based-on-real-events story of a trio of backpackers caught and hunted by an outback serial killer.

The Monster: Mick Taylor (John Jarratt), a sadistic bushman who likes nothing better than maiming, dismembering and being generally quite unpleasant to tourists. Think a psycho mirror world version of Crocodile Dundee.

Scariest Moment: Just when it looks like backpacker Kirsty (Kestie Morassi) has escaped, Mick shoots her would-be rescuer and continues to pursue her in his ‘ute’.

3. Razorback

The Film: Carl (Gregory Harrison) travels to the outback to investigate his wife’s disappearance months earlier. What he finds is an oinking, curly-tailed nightmare of monstrous proportions.

The Monster: A giant murderous boar with a taste for blood and a serious attitude problem. Yes really.

Scariest Moment: In the opening scene, the razorback storms a house and drags away a young boy to eat alive. The mystery of how Daddy Pig got so fat is regrettably solved.

4. Long Weekend

The Film: An Aussie couple takes a camping trip to an isolated beach. But nature has enough of their littering, shooting, and general disrespect for the wilderness, so it starts to fight back…

The Monster: Mother Nature seems to be the villain here, but the true monster is Peter (John Hargreaves). It’s his shooting the wildlife and chucking fag butts everywhere that gets Mother Nature in such a foul mood to begin with.

Scariest Moment: Any one of the moments where an animal launches a seemingly-random and savage attack. Those little possums look cute, but I wouldn’t fancy my chances against one in a punch-up.

5. Bad Boy Bubby

The Film: More of a dark comedy than a straight-up horror, but no-less terrifying. Bubby (Nicholas Hope) is a 35-year-old man-child who’s never left his apartment and has an, erm, unnatural relationship with his other – like a Freudian nightmare version of Room.



The Monster: His dear old Mam, who confines Bubby to the apartment by telling him that the air outside is poisonous (she even wears a gas mask when she does the shopping).

Scariest Moment: Bubby playing with his pet cat, which is stone-cold dead due to Bubby wrapping it in cling film for fun. Yes, he’s odd.

6. Rogue

The Film: A pre-Hollywood Sam Worthington and Mia Wasikowska appear in a story about a group of tourists (it’s always the tourists, isn’t it?) who become the prey of the Australian wild’s most fearsome creature…

The Monster: A giant 23-foot man-eating crocodile. That pretty much says everything you need to know.

Scariest Moment: Someone has the bright idea of setting a zip-line over the river so they can cross without being eaten. Guess how that one turns out.

7. Undead

The Film: A small rural town is attacked by a plague of zombies, leaving a small gang of survivors hauled up in a house and armed with some serious firepower (four-barreled shotgun, anyone?).

The Monster: Your classic zombie – plodding, hungry for flesh, killed by a shot to the head etc. You really can’t go wrong.

Scariest Moment: Just when it looks like they have been saved (by aliens no less – you really do need to watch the movie to appreciate the full wackiness of it), one of them transforms into one of the undead and begins the plague all over again. You just can’t keep a good zombie apocalypse down.


8. The Reef

The Film: Part of an unnerving cycle of films best described as the ‘getting stranded in the sea without a boat’ genre. In this case, a group of young friends are stranded when their yacht hits a coral reef on the way on Indonesia.

The Monster: Your classic great white shark, who’s always reliable for a bit of old fashioned sea-bound terror and fancies some Aussie-flavoured lunch.

Scariest Moment: As the gang tries to swim to a nearby island, the shark finally attacks, biting off poor Matt’s (Gyton Grantley) leg.

9. The Howling III

The Film: The dreadful Howling series takes a trip down under, where werewolves have evolved as marsupials and a young she-wolf lands a role in a movie about werewolves. What are the chances?

The Monster: Are the wolf people the real monsters? Or the soldiers and scientists who want to wipe them out and carry out sick experiments? As you can imagine, Howling III raises some pretty hairy questions.

Scariest Moment: The bit where you realise you might be watching the worst (albeit hilarious) film ever made.

10. Snowtown

The Film: The true story of the Snowtown murders, Australia’s most famous criminal case ever.

The Monster: The utterly terrifying John Bunting (Daniel Henshall), whose hatred for paedophiles and homosexuality fuels a series of grisly murders.

Scariest Moment: As the young and innocent Jamie (Lucas Pittaway) is drawn into Bunting’s spree, he’s persuaded to lure his own brother to his death – a moment that perfectly encapsulates the dark and bleak movie.


Backtrack is out Friday 29th January

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