[Panic Fest 2020 Review] Two Heads Creek is Splatstick gold!

One of the joys of seeing a film at a film festival is that sometimes you’ll either get the director in attendance or, at the very least, they might play a “Message From the Director” at the beginning of the film. In the case of Two Heads Creek, we got the latter in which director Jesse O’Brien mentions that there might be a political subtext to the movie. While I’m not one to argue with a director’s intent, I would say that the “subtext” is as text as it was in Black Christmas. O’Brien and screenwriter Jordan Waller have a lot to say about the current culture we live in...even as they throw copious amounts of blood and guts at us.

Set in a post-Brexit Britain, Two Heads Creek opens with the unceremonious image of Polish sausage lying in the street, before a hoodlum-riding bicycle viciously runs it over, cutting them in half and smashing them into the dirty ground. Just a moment later, the camera lingers on a light pole with a sign that reads “IMMIGRANTS GO HOME!” flapping in the wind. 

Norman (Jordan Waller) is introduced as a butcher who has no clue what he’s doing after his mother passed away. He is preparing to hold a funeral in the butcher shop (which doesn’t seem very sanitary to me, but what do I know) which has become a constant target for anti-immigration assholes who pelt his shop with feces and write bigotted statements on its doors. His twin sister Annabelle (Kathryn Wilder), meanwhile, is a dropout wannabe actress whose latest work can be seen plastered all around Britain. She’s the face of StoolAway, the latest and greatest in laxative help. But Annabelle also wants to act in film so badly that she’s willing to show “half a boob” in a non-paying independent art film.

After cleaning up from the funeral, the twins discover that their mother isn’t really their mother. Their real mother lives in a very small town in a very rural part of Queensland, Australia called Two Heads Creek. After some discussion, they decide to track down their heritage which sends them--along with a bus full of Asian immigrants--to the rickety town. Once there, they start to meet the very odd inhabitants who feel like one bad day away from joining The Sawyers and prove that America doesn’t have the monopoly on backwards villagers. 

At the center of the townsfolk is Apple (Helen Dallimore), her husband Noah (Kevin Harrington) and their slightly off son Eric (David Adlam) along with the apparent leader of the bunch, Hans (Gary Sweet) and racist Uncle Morris (Don Bridges). Their reactions to Norman and Annabelle range from being saccharinely nice to dismissive and angry at their appearance. And soon, Norman and Annabelle realize that Two Heads Creek isn’t exactly what it seems…

Two Heads Creek isn’t very subtle about its targets, as it digs into the macho men of the Australian Outback who quickly and easily catch cans of foul-tasting liquor only they can stomach and the inherent racism of...well, literally everyone. It sharply critiques the white population of Australia in the same over-the-top ways we typically see in the states with hillbillies and Appalachian mountain men.

But even our city-bred heroes aren’t free of being lampooned. When Annabelle discovers they are the only white people on a tour bus full of Asians, she asks, “Why is everyone Chinese?” to which one of the passengers replies, “I’m Vietnamese!” It’s a throwaway line but really digs into the fact that racism rolls downhill. Our two heroes who’ve been harassed for being Polish are completely clueless to their own internalized racism and the script doesn’t let them off the hook. It’s further pounded home when Tour Guide Apple welcomes all of the immigrants on the bus by saying they make Australia work. That without them, it’d be a worthless rock...a comment she says in front of Apari (Gregory J. Fryer), the indigenous bus driver.   

Then there’s the gore, which is wielded with reckless abandon as waves of red cover the characters and sets with enough force it could give Evil Dead a run for its money. It’s Wake in Fright if directed by a disciple of early Peter Jackson. It’s a familiar blend of Splatstick humor and gore, but combined with incredibly off characters that feel one step away from being truly terrifying. But there’s also interludes of surprisingly dry and witty humor, such as one extended sequence about the differences between “yeah-nah” and “nah-yeah” and the sometimes inscrutable Aussie slang. 

And maybe the political underpinnings are a little broad and surface level in focus, but it adds an additional layer to the splatstick gore that really does help elevate Two Heads Creek. This one was a lot of fun.