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Top 10 films set in Australia's creepy outback

From ABC Australia · () English

Translated from English and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

In-depth Named sources Context piece
  • Netflix thriller Apex became one of the year's biggest streaming hits after reaching 2.54 billion minutes viewed and topping the service's global English-language film chart.
  • The film joins a long tradition of movies that use Australia's outback, bush and wildlife as sources of danger and unease.
  • The list includes films such as Rabbit-Proof Fence, Road Games, Quigley Down Under and Burke & Wills, which present threats ranging from serial killers to colonial violence and human error.

Australia's outback has become one of cinema's most reliable sources of unease. The landscape can be beautiful, remote and threatening, while the people who cross it can prove even more dangerous.

That tradition has received a major streaming boost from Apex, a Netflix original action thriller released in late April. The film reached 2.54 billion minutes viewed and climbed to No. 1 on Netflix's Global Top 10 English movies list. Charlize Theron stars as a grieving woman who seeks solace in the wilderness before becoming caught in a deadly cat-and-mouse game with a serial killer. Taron Egerton plays alongside her, using what the article calls a convincing Australian accent, with Australian actor Eric Bana also in the cast.

Director Baltasar Kormákur said the screenplay originally placed the story in the United States. The production needed a warm climate at a particular time of year, but researching Australia changed his view. "As I started looking into it I felt it was actually a great idea to locate the film here and really use Australian nature, which is unique, and build the film around that more," Kormákur said.

The outback has supported horror films as well as thrillers, westerns and historical dramas. In Rabbit-Proof Fence, the landscape frames a story that exposed the forced removal of Indigenous children from their families. Road Games turns a cross-country truck journey into a serial-killer thriller inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window. Quigley Down Under presents a harsh revisionist western in which a landowner hires a gunman to target Indigenous people. Burke & Wills revisits the ill-prepared explorers whose attempt to cross Australia ended in death from thirst. Together, the films make the outback a place where danger can come from the wilderness, the law, colonial power or human mistakes.

As I started looking into it I felt it was actually a great idea to locate the film here and really use Australian nature, which is unique, and build the film around that more.

· Baltasar KormákurThe director explained why Apex moved from its original United States setting to Australia's outback.
About this summary

Originally published by ABC Australia in English. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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