The drama Snowtown is based on grisly and grim real life events and is inspired by 2 books Killing for Pleasure, and The Snowtown Murders. In the late 1990’s John Bunting, along with three others, tortured and murdered twelve people and then stored their bodies in barrels in a bank vault in the small rural town of Snowtown.

The film tells the story from the point of view of one of Buntings accomplices, 18-year-old Jamie Vlassakis who was seduced by Bunting into becoming a killer.

For his debut feature film, Australian director Justin Kurzel not only chose a controversial subject, he also worked with mostly non-actors, people discovered from around the Adelaide suburb where Bunting lived. It’s an impressive, intense debut and is held together by a remarkable performance by Daniel Henshall as John Bunting, one of the only three professional actors in the film.  

This year, Justin Kurzel and Daniel Henshall visited Auckland as part of the New Zealand International Film Festival to talk about their film and we sat down and had a chat.

The drama Snowtown is based on grisly and grim real life events and is inspired by 2 books Killing for Pleasure, and The Snowtown Murders. In the late 1990’s John Bunting, along with three others, tortured and murdered twelve people and then stored their bodies in barrels in a bank vault in the small rural town of Snowtown.

The film tells the story from the point of view of one of Buntings accomplices, 18-year-old Jamie Vlassakis who was seduced by Bunting into becoming a killer.

For his debut feature film, Australian director Justin Kurzel not only chose a controversial subject, he also worked with mostly non-actors, people discovered from around the Adelaide suburb where Bunting lived. It’s an impressive, intense debut and is held together by a remarkable performance by Daniel Henshall as John Bunting, one of the only three professional actors in the film.  

This year, Justin Kurzel and Daniel Henshall visited Auckland as part of the New Zealand International Film Festival to talk about their film and we sat down and had a chat.

This is a first for both of you, your first feature film…congratulations on your success at the Adelaide Film Festival and Cannes….Justin,  nothing cheerier come to mind when you were contemplating your debut feature?

Justin: I didn’t think I would make a film about a serial killer for my first film and there were a couple of films that I was looking at that were comedies, and this one kind of came in and I instinctively knew that it wasn’t going to go away, that I was going to keep reading it and I did. I read the books that were associated with the script and I was also born about 10 minutes away from where it all happened so I knew the area quite well.

I took a long, long, long time to decide to do it and after about six weeks I rang Sarah and Anna [Snowtown Producers] up and said “yeah, ok I’ll do it”. But I really want to do it a certain way with non actors and re-look at the script, and they kind of agreed to do it which surprised me because I was hoping that they’d say no, that I didn’t have to do it. I think I would have kicked myself if I didn’t do it; it was just one of those projects that I knew instinctively it was completely right, but at the same time I was pretty scared of it.

It’s a story you only get to tell once really isn’t it? You’re not going to get a flood of films covering this subject.

Justin: I always thought I wanted my first film to be pretty brave and I guess risky, and I don’t think you could get anything kind of riskier about doing a film about real murders and trying to, I guess, give a different perspective that hadn’t really been seen before.

Was it easy decision for you Daniel to take on this role of a psychopath?

Daniel: Initially I didn’t really think about it, I just thought about the opportunity to play a role that you don’t often get to play and it’s one of a psychopathic killer. And in reading the script and reading Justin’s notes, it was all very much about relationships and I thought, fuck that’s brilliant. You know, I get to play someone with this menace in his intentions and this heinous nature but without having to show the entire world that you are a serial killer, so you have to play on nuance and the subtleties of that. I was very excited about that.

What appealed to you about telling the story from Jamie’s point of view?

Justin: Well I was interested in the themes of corruption of innocence; I thought that was really interesting in the film. And I think Jamie also became a metaphor for that community, a community that was kind of forgotten and didn’t really feel as though it had a voice. So through him I guess you’re able to see what happens when a community is left to fend for itself and find it’s own role models, and how easily it would be for a figure like John Bunting to come in and corrupt a group of people that were pretty helpless.  

I know there wasn’t a lot of material about John Bunting, he was a bit of an enigma, and so you don’t learn that much about him. By telling this story through Jamie’s eyes though, you do learn about how maybe John became a serial killer. What happens to Jamie is almost a reflection of what might have happened to John as a kid to make him the way he was.

It’s interesting because there’s been some criticism of the film that you don’t know, or understand why John’s doing it which I find difficult to believe because I think there are many hints within the film and suggestions as to why he is. And there’s definitely the thoughts that he had a pretty terrible upbringing as well that might have crossed over into abuse and that that was one of the motivating forces. But I think there are many things; I think there’s a search for a sexual identity in the film too that people are expressing through violence. Not just John I think many of the characters in the film. I don’t think we ever set out to say, you know, John is gay, but I do think there is a grey area there where they’re all really searching to find who they are and what they feel for each other.

How easy was it to take this story and turn it into a screenplay? How easy was it to take this massive story and put it into the constraints of a film?

I think the biggest challenge was there were so many characters involved and so many different kind of subplots that it was kind of, what do you get rid of? And in the end we got rid of quite significant sub-plots in the film, and how do you kind of condense it all down and still tell a story through the point of view and focus on the relationships between John and Jamie, which is what the story is about. It’s a father and son kind of film, so that was really, really difficult and then I just think we had a really big question about the violence in the film where we were going to position the audience with that? You know 12 murders did happen. So do you bring any of them to life on the screen? Which one do you leave out? Which is the most significant within our storytelling?  And that was a really difficult decision and one that took a long time to come to. 

I have to be honest going into watch the film I wasn’t sure how much I was going to enjoy it, but you get the balance of violence spot on. You get the feeling of how gruesome and twisted it all was and you understand how horrific the violence was, but at the same time I never got pushed beyond being able to tolerate it. People have responded in different ways though haven’t they?

It’s a polarizing film. I think what people can take on screen in terms of violence is very subjective and everyone’s got their different levels of what they can endure. It wasn’t even about enduring you know, I just thought the violence on screen, it needed not to lead the film, it always needed to be connected to those initiations that John places in front of Jamie…The only one [murder] to me that I though, ok that needs to be realized, was the death of Troy, the brother.

Because of the connection to Jamie?

Absolutely, yeah, the connection, the history, it was his biggest initiation. The idea of getting a kid to kill his own brother which is such an extreme action but you kind of watch it going, I kind of emotionally understand where it’s all at, and why this is becoming a mercy killing.

Daniel, was there any point where you personally struggled with the violence you had to portray?

Daniel: Yeah, that scene and it wasn’t just me personally, it was the whole cast and crew. We shot that over two days and it was the first time all of us had got together and physicalized an actual event, because the film is a lot of intentions and all about relationships so the violence in the film all comes out of that world of relationships. But this was the first time we actually, I know I did and I know Lucas did [Lucas Pittaway played Jamie], we all looked at each other and though what fuck are we doing? Is this the film were making?

Justin: I think it’s also because a lot of the other scenes were cooking or suggested looks and just life and I think you’re sudden in a bathroom pounding this guy face. It was the first time it really hit home what we were making and where we needed to go to do it justice.

Easier or harder directing untrained actors or with the prep you did it doesn’t matter?

Justin: It’s just different. I think this film was very specific because it’s about a specific community and I felt that needed to be very clear on screen. So it’s just a little different. I do think there is something about first time actors, that they do seem to be much more present in a scene and they do seem to listen to each other much more because they’re not coming in with so many ideas about what they are going to do with a scene.

Which is really interesting in the edit. I got into the edit and I was able to use a lot of reaction shots from the guys because you could see that they were completely and utterly present in the scene and actually listening and looking. And that’s not to say experienced, professional actors don’t do that, it’s just different, you know. I think when you do have ego on set and you get two kind of bull actors I do think there is a slight competition of just so many ideas coming into the scene that are premeditated that have nothing to do with being present and being there, and finding the truth between the two of you in the scene and I’ve always been frustrated watching acting like that.

Well, thanks so much for taking the time to have a chat about making Snowtown. We’re thrilled to be playing the film on Rialto Channel.

SNOWTOWN premieres on Saturday December 15 at 8.30pm.