3. Snowtown (2011)
Is it possible for a movie to seem too real? In its account of the so-called ‘barrel murders’ that haunted a poor Australian suburb in the 1990s, Snowtown lives alongside Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer as a film that brings viewers a little too close to the darkest corners of humanity to qualify as ‘entertainment’. For seven years, a group of four men, led by John Bunting, carried out a series of gruesome slayings, mostly targeting alleged pedophiles and homosexuals.
Director Justin Kurzel focuses particularly on how Bunting recruited an abused teenager into assisting him, and spares few details. No, it’s not something you casually throw on during a boring night in. But if you’re ever compelled to stare directly into the abyss of the human psyche, there may be no darker portal in movies.