Picnic At Hanging Rock Reviews

Interesting Mystery Yarn

Pre-dating Blair Witch-style marketing by over 20 years, this film (and preceding novel) has fooled many into thinking it's an account of an actual event (i.e. 'one of Australia's greatest unsolved mysteries' as it says up there in the synopsis). In fact the story is entirely fictional, but it's fun trying to piece together your own solution. There's a director's cut of this movie available but this version isn't it.

Ethereal delights from down-under

During a picnic trip to Hanging Rock, three girls and their teacher disappear without trace, leaving a mystery that refuses to be solved. Based on the 1967 novel by Joan Linday, Weir delivers a film that relies more on ambience than traditional, rigid narrative. Awash with haunting imagery, a wistful score and strong central performances, PaHR is a delicate blend of supernatural melodrama and repressed adolescent sexuality. The slow pace and deliberate vagueness of the plot may frustrate some viewers but if you enjoy films that utilize mood rather than rely on overt action, for example Terrence Mallick’s Days of Heaven, then is a must. 5/5

Very Strange...

A group of school girls go on a picnic (you guessed it...at Hanging Rock!) and three of the girls and a teacher go missing...

This film is very atmospheric, the sound effects and the way in which certain scenes are filmed create tension. This film is about how the missing four affect those who knew them. The mystery carries throughout the film, but don't expect answers. You come up with your own conclusion.

Worth a watch but frustrating nevertheless.

Atmospheric, surreal and beautiful

A wonderful film, a simple story but created with magic and mystery.

For years I believed this to be a true story, disappointed when I learned the episode was a newspaper hoax.

Haunting music, enhances the beauty and danger of nature.

Mysterious

An absorbing and haunting film that looks and feels very 1970s. It could be a metaphor for colonialism but is enjoyable simply as an eerily intriguing story.

At times the direction compares with Nicholas Roeg.

[Highly rated reviewer]

A rather foul tasting picnic

Picnic at Hanging Rock is an early film from Peter Weir, director of modern greats such as, The Truman Show and Witness. The film follows how teachers and pupils of a private all girls’ school react to the disappearance of some of their fellow pupils at a local beauty spot. While the police search for the girls we are forced to endure painful dialogue, philosophical hints at their whereabouts, terrible pan pipe music, a huge amount of ponderous shots of the ubiquitous Hanging rock and some stuff about repressed female sexuality. All of the above is conducted in a hugely pretentious, dull and self-indulgent fashion, in a film that thinks it’s a lot deeper and meaningful than it actually is. For a proper ambivalent and mysterious Australian film, watch Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout. This hints at sexual tension and highlights the beauty and brutality of nature with proper characters you actually care about.

If you like atmosphere, beautiful photography, moral tales and surreal plots, Roeg's Walkabout, check this film out.

If you need action and thrils, try something else. I think it's great, even if it's not based on a real event, as it claims.

beautiful

A wonderful film. It keeps you guessing as to what actually happened to the missing girls.

Unique in the fact it never directly answers the question.

Every time I watch it I come up with a new theory as to what happened.

I must admit this film is not to every ones taste. Like the other reviewer said if you want action and drama Do not rent it.

The film is more arty than anything else.

Mysteriously inexplicable!

The storyline is very slow, characters are flat, and nothing is explained. I found it boring, shallow, and difficult to follow. I didn't enjoy it at all.

enchanting and spooky..keeps you stuck to the spot

lovely film..with enchanting music..and a spooky tale that leaves you both mystified and wondering..keeps you rivited throughout..worth watching..