The abductors – Emma Booth and John WhiteĮven then the film soft pedals the horror element. This has either been tiptoed around or Ben Young never actually sat down to ask the big why when he wrote the script. If such was a shock to her (which suggests that it was not their original intended purpose), then that leaves you with the natural question of why it is the two of them are abducting the girls. John White clearly wants them for sexual purposes but Emma Booth is shocked to find him doing so and demands he get rid of the girls as soon as he starts unleashing his desires. We are never even sure, for instance, why the couple are abducting and imprisoning teenage girls. Only what we get is a film that plays everything incredibly safely. The film I expected to watch was one that told a story similar to real-life murderous couples such as Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka or Fred and Rosemary West, or something in the territory of the disturbing British film Mum & Dad (2008). Thereafter though, Hounds of Love starts to lose interest.
My attention was initially held by Ben Young’s establishment of a naturalism and the casualness during the scenes where John White and Emma Booth invite Ashleigh Cummings back to their place, offer her a drink and then abruptly grab and chain her up as she tries to flee. Hounds of Love led me to expect one sort of film from its write-ups, only for the film to head off in different directions. It represents a directorial debut for Ben Young who went on to the US-made SF film Extinction (2018). It did the rounds of a number of other festivals, before being given a US theatrical release in 2017. Hounds of Love received some great word of mouth after its premiere at the Venice Film Festival.