‘Scare Campaign’ Is One Of Australia’s Best New Horror Films; Will Anyone Be Watching?

It’s the nasty, gruesome, and wickedly entertaining new Aussie horror movie that is as far removed from the moody, elegant chills of The Babadook as you could possibly get. It’s the movie where someone doesn’t just get decapitated, they get the top half of their head sliced off exposing the gooey brains inside. It’s the movie where somebody doesn’t just get stabbed with a butcher’s knife, they get chainsawed up the guts. It’s grisly and gory and full of twists that should make horror fiends deliriously giddy.

For filmmaking brothers Cameron and Colin Cairnes, Scare Campaign is also a departure of sorts from their debut feature 100 Bloody Acres. That film was far more comedic, relying on gags about Rebecca Gibney’s masturbation fantasies as much as the gory bloodletting. Their latest is more of a good ol’ fashioned slasher flick; one that wouldn’t feel out of place in the genre’s local heyday of the 1980s during the era that was later affectionately coined as ‘ozploitation’.

“That sense of fun that those films had, just unbridled entertainment,” the directors say. “This unashamed attitude of ‘let’s entertain the audience’.” Certainly, that atmosphere of fun lingers over Scare Campaign, which layers surprises old-fashioned jump frights entwined with creepier what-would-you­­-do scares, all laced with litres upon litres of blood. “A lot of genre films from Australia in recent times may go in a more arthouse horror route than straight slasher route. But for us, no matter what the genre is, our aim is to engage an audience and to have them on the edge of their seats and to create a visceral movie experience.”

Yeah, I think they did it.

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I’m A Celebrity With Bloody Power Tools

Scare Campaign stars Ian Meadows as Marcus, the director of a horror-themed TV prank show that’s slipping in the ratings. Warned by their boss — a delicious, over-the-top cameo by Sigrid Thornton — to ramp things up or face the axe (perhaps literally), Marcus and his team of intrepid frighteners, including the show’s star and Marcus’ girlfriend Emma (Meegan Warner, devise one last terrifying prank for ratings glory. Setting up shop inside a disused asylum — because where else? — things start to go awfully wrong when the subject of their game turns the tables and starts taking revenge of his own.

Inspired in part by Colin’s history of working on a hidden camera prank show — on Singapore television no less — as well as plenty of research into the punking genre, the brothers maintain they forged their story without direct links to any one event. Still, it’s hard to watch Scare Campaign and not recognise the commentary on low-brow modern television with its constantly raising stakes and shameless need to plunder society’s basest emotions. It’s I’m a Celebrity with bloody power tools.

“It just so happened in the last year or two that that pranking and hoax phenomenon has really started to explode,” they say. And certainly, when I raise the possibility of David Cronenberg’s 1983 snuff thriller Videodrome as a possible inspiration, they don’t dismiss it — “we’re big fans of that film” — while also citing Psycho, Richard Attenborough’s performance in the 1971 British crime drama 10 Rillington Place, and the groundbreaking Peeping Tom from 1960. “That one was always in the back of our heads… Literally in the back of some characters’ heads,” they say with a laugh.

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Is There A Problem With Australian Horror?

100 Bloody Acres, the brothers’ 2012 feature debut, found brief international fame as one of the most pirated downloaded movies in the world. After successfully premiering at the Melbourne International Film Festival, it was over a year until the film received a theatrical release in Australia at which point it had already found its way to American VOD and subsequently spread through torrents around the globe.

This time around, the Cairnes’ are keen to take matters into their own hands.

“Our MIFF premiere was such a great, sold-out experience, and then nothing happened for ages. That was really frustrating. So this time around it’s a matter of getting the ball rolling ourselves. We’re finding with a very limited budget that we’re able to reach a lot of people through the power of social media. It’s something we maybe didn’t have a handle on last time around. If we could just do whatever we can to create interest and demand that’s a really good starting point. Hopefully with the likes of [event screening provider] Tugg things will start changing.”

The brothers are optimistic about Australian horror generally — “our strike rate is
pretty good and our reputation overseas is really strong” — but they suggest low population doesn’t allow these films to break out the way they do in places like America and Asia. Both regions have a much stronger tradition with horror and going to see it in cinemas. There’s also the hint of apathy on the part of cinema operators; the brothers say they’re banking on “friendly exhibitors that are open to genre films” to change that. However, after the wildly acclaimed and award-winning The Babadook could only find the most meagre of local box office returns to the bewilderment of everyone, the brothers are looking to international distribution to help find real, lasting success.

“We like to think that there’s commercial potential in what we do. We just started doing these event screenings around Australia and it’s been building a bit of a steam. I think that might be helping us with a bit of international sales. Fortunately, there is an appetite for this kind of film overseas, and I think in the long run the returns can come.”

Like The Babadook, Wolf Creek, Lake Mungo, Black Water, Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead, and other local horror favourites from the last decade, Scare Campaign hopes to build a reputation that will see it remembered long after all the bodies have been carved and incinerated… Did I mention somebody gets incinerated? Because they do.

Thanks to some good ol’ fashioned fun and frights, the Cairnes brothers might just get it.

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Scare Campaign is touring the country with special event screenings. Follow their Facebook page for details.

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Glenn Dunks is a freelance writer from Melbourne. He also works as an editor and a film festival programmer while tweeting too much @glenndunks.