REVIEW: Is The Second sitting in first place for worst Australian movie of 2018?

REVIEW: A possible embrace from the so-bad-it’s-good crowd seems the only happy home for The Second, a calamitous erotic thriller where anything resembling the erotic or thrilling has been absent-mindedly left out.

THE SECOND (MA15+)

Rating: One star (1 out of 5)

Director: Mairi Cameron (feature debut)

Starring: Rachael Blake, Susie Porter, Vince Colosimo, Martin Sacks.

There will be no prizes for coming

Here’s hoping there will never be a second The Second.

This stupendously pretentious Australian drama is so one-of-a-kind awful, making another would just kill its chances of unwittingly becoming a cult/camp classic.

A possible embrace from the so-bad-it’s-good crowd seems the only happy home for this shambles, especially after it leaves cinemas for a priority placement on the streaming platform Stan later this month.

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The Second is stupendously pretentious Australian drama.

Rachael Blake plays The Writer, a conniving author needing to follow up a hit first book, and lacking the saucy source material her randy readers’ tongues are hanging out for.

Perhaps a leisurely weekend in the country with uppity boyfriend The Publisher (Vince Colosimo) and downer of a best friend The Muse (Susie Porter) will lift that wanting word count?

What follows is a calamitous erotic thriller where anything resembling the erotic or thrilling has been absent-mindedly left out.

When dire dialogue isn’t gumming your ears up with empty art-movie ambiguities, the screenplay fully commits to a salacious brand of silliness that borders on the surreal.

A scene from The Second.

The Second is in cinemas now and soon to premiere on Stan.

Sub-plots fugally sprouting from the many cracks in this brittle affair include some possible killings, some potential bedhopping, the firing of guns and the throwing of a live snake.

The serpent in question is chucked at The Publisher by a mysterious gent known as The Brother (Martin Sacks).

This guy is a real worrying piece of work, and not just because he appears to buy his outfits from the same menswear outlet as that psycho John Jarratt plays in Wolf Creek.

The Brother keeps showing up in his ute, revving it ominously, and emitting glassy stares that seem to have everyone pooping themselves.

Particularly the poor old Publisher. Later in the movie, when The Writer comes a’calling for one of their regular rough romps in the hay, he rebuffs her with the very valid excuse that “having a snake thrown at ya is a bit of a boner-kill.”

The Second is now showing at selected Palace Cinemas in Victoria, NSW and QLD. If you’re really game you can watch it all you like when it hits Stan later in the month.