Animal Kingdom

As the opening credits of Animal Kingdom play, sombre music sets the scene for a Greek tragedy of betrayal and retribution. David Michod’s debut feature is a gripping crime-drama, showcasing the best work Australian filmmaking talent has to offer and finding new riches to mine in a genre well trodden across the ditch.

Melbourne crime stories are nothing new, but by choosing to focus on the ‘who’, rather than the ‘what’, or the ‘why’, Michod takes a fresh approach. Everything revolves around this family of dysfunctional characters, each one varying in their loyalty to a life of crime and thus contributing to a simmering tension between themselves. Newbie James Frecheville is a terrifically blank, open-mouthed slate, proving hard to peg, not just for the audience, but for his increasingly suspicious extended family as well.

Michod, together with cinematographer Adam Arkapaw, use the screen as a large canvas to replicate the feel of a hot, languid, Melbourne summer. The pace is relaxed, but the storyline slowly winds tighter and tighter, ratcheting up the levels of tension to Hitchcockian levels. His filmic references aren’t hard to spot – Scorsese’s bold visual poetry and juxtapositions of popular music with moments of high drama are evident.

Such comparisons for an new name present Michod with a challenge for a follow-up, but his assured debut has earned them. This is a cracking story with fascinating characters, an engrossing tale of a family’s fall.