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Plot Summary
This sensual and striking chronicle of a disappearance and its aftermath put director Peter Weir on the map and helped usher in a new era of Australian cinema. Based on an acclaimed 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock is set at the turn of the twentieth century and concerns a small group of students from an all- female college who vanish, along with a chaperone, while on a St. Valentine’s Day outing. Less a mystery than a journey into the mystic, as well as an inquiry into issues of class and sexual repression in Australian society, Weir’s gorgeous, disquieting film is a work of poetic horror whose secrets haunt viewers to this day.
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Rotten Tomatoes Movie Reviews
TOMATOMETER
94%- Reviews Counted: 35
- Fresh: 33
- Rotten: 2
- Average Rating: 8.5/10
Top Critics' Reviews
Fresh: The story provides Mr. Weir with material for a kind of Australian horror-romance that recalls Nathaniel Hawthorne's preoccupation with the spiritual and moral heritage of his own New England landscape.
Fresh: This horrific tale is told with marvelous shadowy indirection and delicate lyricism.
Fresh: One of the most hauntingly beautiful mysteries ever created on film.
Fresh: A film of haunting mystery and buried sexual hysteria.
Customer Reviews
Eerie and Surreal
Some classify this as a horror - it isn’t at all. It’s VERY loosely based on the disappearance of some girls at Hanging Rock in Australia. There is nothing specifically scary - but there is an oppressive dreamlike quality that’s unsettling (and never lets up right through the rather jarring ending). Worth a watch to see one of the more skilled directors creating an eerie art film that isn’t easily shaken.
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