Lightning-paced, violent to the extreme, and bursting with melodrama, Pure Scum is the antithesis to a comfort watch – indeed, it is a film so viscerally unpleasant that I had difficult pinpointing whatever magic sauce it had in it that made me want to keep watching.
Two trouble-seeking private schoolboys, Ayden – a ‘gifted child’ turned drug dealer – and Jesse – a manipulative, charismatic rebel – decide to go out on the town after their high school graduation. Mere minutes later, a devastating car crash leaves them foolishly fleeing to the Melbourne CBD to escape the consequences.
Bad decision after bad decision turns a bad night into the worst night imaginable, and transforms this film from a mere ‘actions have consequences’ PSA to a series of near-divine punishments one might call ‘the eshay’s eternal damnation’.
Pure Scum is a new – and aptly titled – Australian independent feature that’s playing at the Fantastic Film Festival across Melbourne and Sydney currently, and will likely have a long festival shelf life ahead of it. It’s pulpy, unique and confidently crafted, well enough that it’s no wonder it’s gaining local notoriety. But there’s something lacking here that would tip this film from ‘okay, I’ll watch it once’ into ‘hell yeah!’ territory.
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Watch the trailer for Pure Scum:
Pure Scum on an unimaginable level
With one blood-soaked sneaker firmly in Ozploitation territory, Pure Scum narrowly avoids becoming a laughable montage of Final Destination-esque violence by using time-jumps to a future news interview about the fateful night.
This device adds an element of ‘whodunnit’ to the narrative, as the audience scrambles to piece together exactly what went down that prompted a 60 Minutes style sit-down with everyone in Ayden and Jesse’s lives.
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Thanks to some decent script writing and a marvellous turn from each of the two lead actors, Will Hutchins and Nikita Chronis, the characters of Ayden and Jesse are compelling to watch, despite being real big pieces of shit (Pieces of Shit could have definitely worked as the title, just saying).
It is genuinely hard to tell who is manipulating who in this dangerous duo, and the obvious answers won’t be so obvious by the midway turning point.
But despite the promising efforts of the actors, and some extremely high stakes, Pure Scum ultimately doesn’t dazzle. For one, the stakes are raised too quickly, and before we can adjust to the situation at hand, yet another problem-to-be-solved (in this case, two accidental deaths) presents itself.
The non-stop assault of the senses (by way of noisy nightclubs, punch-ons, speeding cars and gunshots) makes the viewing experience quite frustrating and disorienting – an outcome that would actually be pretty appropriate for Pure Scum, if not for the fact that the continually escalating circumstances become plain unbelievable.
By the time the boys have split up and committed yet another ‘accidental’ heinous crime each, the repercussions of which have them choosing to run away again, I found myself completely taken out of the immersion, and wondering: ‘really?’.
If sadism is your thing, you might really enjoy watching these lads really go through it.
It’s clear that local writer/director Gideon Aroni has got the guts and ambition to make a great film. While I don’t think Pure Scum has hit that mark just yet, there is potential here – and with the right balance of the nuanced and the overdramatic, his next film could be a real winner.
Pure Scum is showing one more time at Thornbury Picture House (Melbourne) on 20 May, 8:15pm – as part of Fantastic Film Festival Australia.
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