Structured with a cruel precision, written and acted with a persuasive naturalism, this disturbing Australian survival thriller won't appeal to everyone.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 1, 2017

Crikey! We've barely forgotten the recent Australian serial-killer drama Wolf Creek and now here we are again.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 29, 2017

This horror-thriller set in a national park is one of the more brutal films I have seen.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 25, 2017

For a first feature, Killing Ground is highly accomplished.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 25, 2017

Killing Ground combines great aesthetic elegance - including beautiful cinematography and naturalistic editing - with an acrid, lingering foulness, derived from knife-edge performances and a terrifying premise executed with airtight verisimilitude.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 23, 2017

The visceral, unnerving debut of Aussie writer/director Damien Power, Killing Ground a brutal, mercilessly kinetic genre throwback that stings deep and packs a major wallop.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 9, 2017

Made with the basest of intentions and aimed at the lowest form of humanity there is, let this be the first and last feature from Damien Power.

| Original Score: 0/5 | Aug 4, 2017

Power also brings a remarkable degree of technical skill to the film, cutting between his two chronologies at telling moments and turning the idyllic surroundings into a place where danger and horror seems to rest behind each bend in the trail.

| Aug 1, 2017

It works one's nerves over with skill, jumbling up its story's chronology in disorienting ways, and delivering a survivalist saga whose unnerving impact stems in large part from its refusal to shy away from the suddenness -- and ugliness -- of violence.

| Jul 21, 2017

Once the novelty of the film's non-linear plot wears off, Killing Ground is mercilessly rote.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Jul 21, 2017

These personality-free characters fade from your mind even as you're watching the screen, making the brutality waged against them akin to animated mutilation of cartoon creatures.

| Jul 20, 2017

Continuing the tradition of brutal Australian horror films like "Wolf Creek," "Killing Ground" is an effective indie creeper that unnerves the audience with its all-too-realistic violence.

| Jul 20, 2017

Your potential enjoyment of-or repulsion for-Killing Ground comes down to what you want to experience in a horror movie.

| Original Score: B- | Jul 20, 2017

Thankfully, despite his realistic tone, Power isn't about to pull a Michael Haneke and deprive you of the catharsis you expect. He just makes getting there a brutal drive.

| Jul 20, 2017

Even Eli Roth would turn away from what happens to some of the characters in this film, but it's the case of a delayed, unsatisfying payoff.

| Jan 26, 2017

Raw, riveting and realistic, Killing Ground carves terror out of a simple setting by focusing on the plausible horror strangers can inflict on each other.

| Jan 23, 2017

There's shades of Straw Dogs and Deliverance in this effective Aussie backwoods horror, an intelligently restrained work that manages to remain authentic and tense throughout.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 23, 2017

Transcends the cliches even as the film uses plenty of familiar tropes, laying down a solid hour of effective buildup to a duly hair-raising, prolonged climax.

| Jan 21, 2017

A blunt, brutally effective survival tale distinguished by the parallel suspense tracks of its non-chronological structure.

| Jan 21, 2017