The King Is Dead!

Synopsis: Max (Dan Wyllie) and Therese (Bojana Novakovic) buy a nice house in the suburbs. On one side are friendly neighbours with a daughter who loves to come and visit. On the other side is King (Gary Waddell), an ageing drug dealer with unsavoury friends who party all night and drink all day.

Ever had a neighbour who drove you crazy? My old neighbours were rude, and occasionally annoying, but short of the odd revenge fantasy they didn’t enter my consciousness that much. But I’ve got it easy compared to a mate of mine who had to take an AVO out on his neighbour. Max and Therese don’t have that luxury, as they can’t prove a thing against King and his cronies, so they start to hatch plans to deal with him. At first they’re just fancies, but gradually driven crazy, they decide to act.

De Heer gleefully skewers white middle-class attitudes as Max and Therese first think they can be friendly and tolerant, enjoying a bit of local colour. But their first solution, earplugs, leads to their second problem, which leads to a third, and the spiral leads them further and further into appallingly stupid plans that only a complete naïf would think would work. The unfolding is hysterical to watch, and this is easily de Heer’s most accessible film given the fairly straight black comic approach he takes with the story. Watching two cultured people try to deal reasonably, and then unreasonably, with a bunch of lying, thuggish bogans is incredibly funny. And then it all goes wrong. This being a de Heer film, it had to take a dark turn at some point, but don’t let that put you off. It comes back into comic territory fairly quickly.

The King Is Dead! is a funny film that anyone who has been annoyed with their neighbours will be able to relate to. And everyone else can laugh with relief.

 

 

Want more about this film?

    

Want something different?