I watched this at the independent cinema on the 19th of May, 2025. It’s an Australian film from 1975, based on a true story of a group of boarding school girls who went on a picnic to the eponymous Hanging Rock, where some of them became missing.
It was definitely atmospheric, with a hazy, suffused aesthetic most reminiscent of the Hobbit movies. The bleak sunshine of Australia, the permanent conflict and contrast of the refined European schoolgirls with their uncaring or hostile surroundings, and the pain of the town and the school at the loss of the girls, all added up to quite an unsettling movie, with genuinely scary moments punctuating the uneasy, slow shots.
And yet, and yet, it wasn’t a favourite. The acting was mostly average, the dialogue inaudible, the plot a little boring and inconclusive, even accounting for the desire to capture the fact that this is still an open mystery.
It seems well-loved, people call it the best Australian movie of all time, but it didn’t move me that much.