CELIA
NOOOOOOO!!! Dead-bunny horror!!!
Man. All these Australian horror movies. Skrybe, what's up with that? Honestly, I had NO idea you guys churn out so many of these. Y'all will never be as bad as Quebec, but still, I've gotta ask!
Celia actually isn't really much of a horror movie - unsure of just how to market this thing, the video distributors called it Celia - Child Of Terror and tacked on a cover photo of the war-painted kid with a rifle. (writer/director Ann Turner was reportedly not pleased) It's basically a character study of a nine-year-old girl growing up in 1950's Australia against the backdrop of some Aussie equivalent of the Red Scare. I'm not exactly versed in Australian history, so there's a lot I'm feeling I'm missing out on here. I guess it's one of those "by Australians, for Australians" movies.
Anyway, Rebecca Smart stars as Celia, that little girl of the title. Most of her friends are in families that come to be known as Communist sympathizers, and her father forbids her from playing with them, even bribing her with a pet rabbit named Murgatroyd. (amusing that you'd have to pay for a rabbit in Australia, which boasts some six hundred billion trillion rabbits) She can't quite keep away, though, and Mergatroyd is taken away (the way this unfolds is heartbreaking, and not quite what you think). (this is the most sedate rabbit I've ever seen - Bun can't sit still for more than ten seconds) Then, it's time for VENGEANCE as only a rabbit-lover deprived of a rabbit can dish out!!!
Things are punctuated by frequent old anti-rabbit propaganda flicks, which show triumphant humans carrying away and stringing up dead rabbit carcasses en masse. Can't say this exactly floated my boat; I understand the kind of agricultural and ecological problems they cause in Australia, but still, I just can't help but seeing a zillion poor little guys just like Bun on that screen (who, by the way, just looked on in stark horror).
Dead bunnies aside, I guess this is a fairly involving movie, as long as you keep in mind that it's not a horror film and was never supposed to be (despite the in-dream appearances of a dead grandmother and mythical Aussie beasties called Hobyahs). Celia's a sympathetic girl, and well-played by Smart.
I dunno; it's not really memorable, but it's quite well-made and -acted. If you're in the mood for a rather abstract Australian fantasy/horror/drama about a kid driven to violence over a rabbit in a backdrop of a certain kind of Red Scare, then maybe this one's for you. I don't often find myself in that mood.