From stunning shorts to shocking horrors, these are Nadine Whitney's favourite Australian films of 2025 in no order as order is tyranny.
Honourable Mentions: Dangerous Animals, Salt Along the Tongue, I’m the Most Racist Person I Know, Went Up the Hill, We Bury the Dead, First Light, The Golden Spurtle, The Colleano Heart, Journey Home, David Gulpilil, Westgate.
Hold on to your terry-towelling playsuit; writer/director Mia’Kate Russell is taking us back to 1985 for an exciting and exceptional slasher which not only feels entirely authentic to the era but also pulls into razor-sharp focus the gender norms of the time.
Year 12 is over, and the “perfect” Penny Lane (Bailey Spalding) is having a slumber party (sans parents) with her best friend Amy (Alexandra Jensen) and her girlfriend Toni (Tahlee Fereday) in her coastal home. The Angels’ anthemic Will I Ever See Your Face Again? plays over a montage sunbaking girls and surfing guys. The future’s so bright for law school accepted Penny, that she has to wear shades. She’s in love with a gorgeous woman, she’s popular, and she’s entirely herself. A dark post-punk cloud is on the horizon in the form of Penny’s unstable cousin Kat (Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn) who turns up uninvited and unwanted with an appetite for revenge. Kat also brings with her a loser Brian Mannix styled boyfriend Angus (Ben O’Toole) who also happens to be a minor player in a major amphetamine operation. Also in tow are his “crew” including Rodowsky (Fletcher Humphrys) a loose unit, and the “I’m way too old for this shit” Merrick (Steve Le Marquand).
Before things get seriously bloody they get seriously rapey. A drugged Penny (via some benzo spiked cupcake icing provided by Kat) becomes fair game for Angus to get a leg over with Kat taking polaroids to show what a “slut” Penny is. Russell isn’t playing games when it comes to what was basically normalised behaviour at the time. Drunk chick equals a free root. The issue is still prevalent today, but it isn’t a celebrated part of teen pop culture like it was in the 1980s. Anyone recall John Hughes’ wildly commercially successful Sixteen Candles (1984) and the nerd in the car with the passed-out popular girl? Or the bet revolving around Sam’s (Molly Ringwald’s) underwear?
Russell, who has previously made some excellent horror shorts and primarily worked as a makeup and prosthetic artist, doesn’t skimp on gore or thrills as Penny Lane is Dead turns into a survival horror-slasher with almost everyone underestimating how quickly things can get fucked up on a huge scale. Penny Lane is Dead is replete with fantastic performances, a banging soundtrack, and a deep understanding of genre, time, and place. It’s a bloody ripper!
Penny Lane is Dead played at the 2025 Adelaide Film Festival and will be released via Ari Harrison’s Sanctuary Pictures in 2026.
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I’ve already written about Bring Her Back and its tale of co-dependence and hungry, ugly, grief. Sally Hawkins gives a chilling performance as a foster mother for two recently orphaned siblings.
Bring Her Back is as unutterably sad as it is disturbingly frightening. The end of the film might offer a small amount of catharsis, but all that proceeds it is upsettingly unsettling. Michael and Danny Philippou may just be the premiere horror auteurs in Australia after only two films. Grief in horror films is hardly a new concept, but the way the Philippou brothers render it is stunningly real inside their genre trappings.
Read more in my review here:
Nadine Whitney
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One film I’ve consistently championed over the past couple of years is Charles Williams’ debut feature Inside. A prison drama featuring Guy Pearce and Cosmo Jarvis as two damaged men who each take an interest in the fate of the very young Mel Blight who has transferred out of the juvenile system into the adult prison system. There are several revelations in the work; not the least is the vastly talented newcomer Vincent Miller who plays Mel. Williams looks at the men who seem destined for prison because of mental illness and abuse and how there isn’t much to stop them going over the edge into criminality when they don’t have the resources to work with to help them function on the outside.
Read my review here:
Nadine Whitney
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Nine minutes is the length of David Robinson-Smith’s chilling and anxiety-inducing short about the fragility of innocence. Based on an event on Christmas Day in 2023 Robinson-Smith combines documentary and drama to perfect effect.
Standing among flowers two young boys, Eden and Blye (Eden Wendt and Blye Hawk) are each interviewed about the day they went for a walk and came across a man in a van who wanted to buy Eden’s footy jersey. Their memories differ – there were storm clouds; it was a clear day. They’d been told to go outside; they really shouldn’t have been outside. Once they reach the crux of the tale, the man in the van, neither boy can agree on what he looked like. What they do agree on is that something isn’t right.
The predator they narrowly escaped from has so many faces that he could be any middle-aged man. His identity is impossible to keep fixed but his impact on their lives is profound. Brilliantly shot and immensely evocative, The Shirt Off Your Back is astonishing.
The only thing missing from Leela Varghese and Emma Hough Hobbs’ hilarious and heartfelt queer adult sci-fi animation is a lotus eaters style planet where one gets stuck in an oodie and time vanishes. It’s a major oversight and this is me registering my complaint.
Now I’ve revealed my lifestyle choices (someone make summer oodies) and where my time goes, I will address one of the most entertaining and guffaw-inducing Australian films in a long time. Princess Saira (Shabana Azeez) of Clitopolis (it’s not that hard to find!) is having a bad… 22 years. She’s shy, “boring” and a bit of an embarrassment for her wildly popular mums Queens Anne (Madeleine Sami) and Leanne (Jordan Raskopoulos). She’s just been dumped by her super-hot and incredibly narcissistic girlfriend the bounty hunter Kiki (Bernie Van Tiel). What’s worse is that she was dumped on stage on her birthday, and she is also failing at summoning her Royal labrys.
When Kiki is kidnapped by a trio of Straight White Maliens (voiced by the Aunty Donna guys) and call Saira to provide the ransom, Saira goes on an unexpected journey of self-discovery across the Gaylaxy and outside where things are distinctly “problematic”. Aided by a spaceship (voiced by Richard Roxburgh) from the 21st century and picking up the sunny dispositioned Willow (Gemma Chua-Tran), a nonbinary bisexual musician escaping from GayPop exploitation along the way. Saira’s adventures are manifold and there are so many visual gags to go along with the side-splitting dialogue that the film demands rewatch after rewatch to get it all.
Lesbian Space Princess is at heart a story about believing in yourself and recognising that sometimes it’s not you, you’re just surrounded by jerks. Also, it makes a stellar case for prestidigitation as a multiple use skill. An absolute space blast.
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Australasia lost a mammoth talent when satirist and actor John Clarke passed away in 2017, but Lorin Clarke lost her beloved dad. She’d begun to record his memoirs as conversations before his death and with these as her starting point, Lorin made a glorious documentary about a man who could never be cowed by the establishment.
Home footage, interviews with those who loved him as a co-worker and as an inspiration, and clips of John’s incredible body of work create a warm-hearted, funny, and melancholy portrait of a man who cared about the little guy and lived a life where he stuck to his principles. I can only say thanks to both Lorin and to John for the gift.
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Gabrielle Brady and Kasimir Burgess both made documentaries about the effect of “modernity” and the environmental crisis on the people of Mongolia. They are both concerned with centuries-old traditions and lifestyles being lost as the sustainability for herders, farmers, and horse breeders is rapidly dwindling as desertification takes from arable land, and harsh weather conditions mean that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find land where food sources are available.
The Wolves Always Come at Night has Brady and her crew restaging a terrible dust storm which caused herders Davaa and Zaya (and their four children) to lose the majority of their herd and make the impossible choice to leave the Gobi Desert for a ger district in Ulaanbaatar. Davaa is particularly lost in his new surroundings and feels the weight of failure pressing upon him. “How can I call myself a herder?” he asks his wife. He yearns to be back in the desert as do many of his neighbours in the barely functional ger district (no plumbing, no electricity). Although it’s not stated explicitly in Brady’s documentary (it is in Burgess’) it’s the race to destroy the environment that is taking away livelihoods of people who begin with so little and are caretakers of some of the most remote land on the planet.
Iron Winter follows horse herders Chadraa Barsbold and Dondogsuren Batbold as they undertake the duty of moving the horse population during winter to ensure they find food. It’s part coming-of-manhood ritual and part a glimpse into a life most Westerners never see or know. Winter isn’t a short amount of time in Mongolia, it’s months and months of temperatures that defy mammalian survival of any variety. The two young men form a bond as they struggle to keep over 2000 horses alive. They make it back and there has been attrition – starvation, wolves attacking, extreme temperatures – and they both wonder if they have failed. There’s also insight into how each ‘cowboy’ honours the animals who do not make it. Like Davaa, one of the young men decides to move to Ulaanbaatar, and he too finds himself lost in the city. Both documentaries are beautifully lensed and intimate while also being grand in scope as they take in the weird beauty of the desert and the impossible skies.
Iron Winter:
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The Wolves Always Come at Night:
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Two microbudget Australian horror features made it on to the Sydney SXSW roster no doubt thanks to the incredible Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. Both films are ingenious takes on their particular kind of horror genre; found footage for Welcome Back to My Channel and post-apocalyptic survival horror for Bunny. Both are also more than deserving of their own extended reviews which I plan to undertake. In the interim a slight “taster” for both (potentially a spoiler).
Found footage can fall into a trap of favouring the situation more than the people in it. Characters aren’t often that memorable because they’re not fleshed out. Jorrden Daly cares about her characters and they’re written so adeptly that the audience is involved in their relationship before things get out of control.
Australian YouTube/TikTok influencer Suki Ren (Meg Fraser) has been living in America with fellow influencer Lee Reid (Bryn Chapman Parish). Suki’s channel is family friendly, make-up routines, romance, and all things designed to make her audience feel intimately connected with her. Lee’s reputation is a bit wilder as he is more into extreme sports and has an energy drink sponsorship. When they travel to Sydney, ostensibly so Suki can see her family and properly announce their engagement, the whole thing is, of course, on camera. But what is real in a cultivated image and life? How do Suki and Lee really feel about each other? Can they trust that they’re not using each other to boost each other’s brands?
The element of distrust is played into when they end up going camping in a National Park. Cassian (Keenan Walker) a third wheel joins them and is pushing Lee to break up with Suki. When pranks turn ugly Suki begins to wonder if Lee wants to be with her. When pranks seem designed to shame Suki the atmosphere gets less cordial. Who are these people? And if they can’t decide on that much, how are they going to survive the real horror waiting for them in the bush?
George Miller used a nuclear apocalypse as the basis for the feral survival thrillers in the Mad Max series. And in 1979 that was a valid and immediate concern. It’s coming back to the world table as a concern, but we have another that we can feel the impact of already—climate collapse. Bunny is a no holds barred piece of Aussie ferocity. Bunny (Kate Wilson) is coming of age in the midst of a near-dead Australia. She is cared for by Father (Andy Golledge) or perhaps it’s the other way around. Keeping people away from what little they have is essential but there are also more immediate reasons. When intruders attempt to take Bunny, including the spectacularly outfitted Ôntrei, the fight for survival becomes something visceral.
Bunny features impeccable sound design and is immaculately shot by Aemon Barzanji. High concept overcomes limited budget and James Branson’s debut will have you on the edge of your seat. Just don’t watch while eating. Trust me.
Kiah Roache-Turner always wanted to make Jaws, or at least one part of it; Quint’s story of surviving at sea with the USS Indianapolis. War and sharks makes for a fascinating premise. Roache-Turner gives the USS Indianapolis story a twist by moving the action to the Pacific and the sinking of the HMAS Armidale in 1942 in the Timor Sea.
Beast of War stars the wonderful Mark Coles Smith as Leo a young soldier who distinguishes himself in basic bootcamp training despite jeers of racism. He becomes the troop leader after proving he understands the basic tenet of leaving no-one behind. This is especially true of the bond he forms with the very young and very green Will (Joel Nankervis). However, no matter how it’s painted, none of the young men are ready for what they’ll face when the ship carrying the company is sunk by Japanese forces.
It's not only the injuries, the loss of life, the lack of food, water, and ammunition on the piece of flotsam several of the men end up on; there’s also a very persistent and very hungry shark that circles them waiting to pick them off one by one.
While the film delivers all the shark related action you’d hope via mostly practical effects, the most impressive thing is how incredibly painterly and weirdly beautiful the cinematography is (shout out to Mark Wareham). Roache-Turner delivers a great film about mateship under pressure making the film a very satisfying WWII experience, and it is an outstanding shark thriller and probably one of the best-looking shark movies I can recall.
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