Suburban Mayhem

Perhaps it’s our convict origins that explain the fondness Australian film-makers have for society’s bottom feeders – petty crims and bully boys, junkies and louts loom large in films such as Idiot Box (1996), The Boys (1998), Getting’ Square (2003) and Em4J (2006). With Suburban Mayhem, director Paul Goodman and writer Alice Bell make their contribution to the list. It’s a raunchy, in your face black comedy designed to tick all the bad behaviour boxes and then some.

The film revolves around Katrina Skinner (Emily Barclay), an out-of-control 19 year old single mother with the moral compass of a sewer rat, who lives in some unidentified Australian suburb and who has been accused of murdering her father (Robert Morgan). The only person she really cares about is her brother who is in jail for decapitating a convenience store clerk in a botched robbery with a dim-witted friend (Anthony Hayes). The film tells the story of the connection between her brother’s incarceration and her father’s death.

As writer Bell served as Barclay’s body double we can assume there is a good deal of truth to Katrina’s antics but the problem is that although the film occasionally touches on something like real life relationships, notably between Katrina and her father, Goodman plays the film as a showcase of her monstrous self-preoccupation but without hitting the level of salaciousness or sensationalism that might have made the film worth watching. Barclay does a fine job of playing slutty and overall the acting is strong (with a stand-out performance from Mia Wasikowska in her feature debut as a timid beautician) but the problem is that unless you find unremitting offensiveness amusing Suburban Mayhem is pretty much a tiredly pointless affair.  

 

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