20/20 Filmsight - Film Criticism by David O'Connell

The filmmakers are probably a little tired of it, but conducting a conversation about The Horseman is tricky without at least mentioning the film’s meagre budget. Not because this is a bad film made better by the fact it was produced with little money, but because writer, director, co-producer and editor Steven Kastrissios really has taken thriftiness to another level.

Kastrissios has been toying around with film since he was in his early teens, and that fact becomes readily apparent as you watch The Horseman. It’s a project almost perfectly balanced between the ingenuity of youth and an understanding of filmmaking that only comes with experience and maturity. Pretty much every trick you ever used to make your Grade 11 Film & Tele project is used here, only with a lot more confidence and in the service of a compelling story.

At the centre of The Horseman is Christian (played with outrageous intensity by Peter Marshall), an ordinary man hell bent on bloody revenge. His daughter has been found dead of a heroin overdose soon after she appeared in a hardcore porn film, and Christian won’t rest until everyone involved has paid for their complicity. So he takes to the North Queensland roads, working his way from one victim to the next, determined to scrub clean the bottom of this particularly filthy barrel.

The violence in The Horseman is arresting, to say the least. Kastrissios learned his action by meticulously recreating scenes from Predator and Die Hard, and it shows, because the fight scenes are something to behold – ambitious in their setup, audacious in their execution, verisimilar in their impact. They smell of 80s action in another way too, in that Christian is the most indestructible middle-ager I’ve ever seen.

But Kastrissios is smart enough not to make The Horseman just about the violence. With all the effort ultimately put into production it would have been easy to post in the original screenplay, but he’s provided some much-needed humanity through Christian’s developing relationship with a young girl, Alice (Caroline Marohasy), who’s plying the same roads looking for answers to her own particular problems. It’s perhaps not quite as fully-fleshed as Kastrissios wanted it to be, but ample service is paid to Christian’s search for his own humanity, adding some much needed bite to a fantastic final sequence.

Peter Marshall is something close to dynamite in the lead role. His grief is well-worked, and when the script requires a bit of a leap, Marshall’s performance goes some way to easing the pain. The intensity also helps sell Christian’s seemingly superhuman strength, although some of his methods of torture ultimately seem a touch elaborate for a man driven by pure vengeance.

Marohasy comes to the party as Christian’s quietly troubled fellow traveller. She works some nice nuance as Alice, and the role should see her move on to bigger things. The supporting cast hardly let the filmmakers down either, with the stone-cut Brad McMurray particularly impressive as Christian’s most intimidating opponent.

Throughout, the visual storytelling is first class. Kastrissios proves himself a fine filmmaker – his expertise extending into the editing room – but cinematographer Mark Broadbent is equal to the task, getting some excellent mileage from the shoot’s limited resources.

And the question of budgets and resources may indicate Kastrissios’s greatest achievement: the fact that the film got made without any government funding or significant outside investment is a testament to both his and Rebecca Dakin’s skills as producers. In any case, this is an exceptional piece of work, a film that demands your attention and another sign of a slow renaissance in genre in Australian cinema.


I say: It’s easy to label The Horseman as being impressive for its budget, but that would be selling it short. This is quality filmmaking no matter which way you cut it.

See it for: Some absolutely frightening fight scenes.