10 Movies That Used Your Imagination Against You
5. Picnic At Hanging Rock
This one is a little less aggressive than most of this
list, being more of a slow-moving mystery than a traditional horror, but it nonetheless
earns its spot due to the surreal and disquieting atmosphere of the film, and
how much its ambiguity plays a central role in that tense, strange tone.
Aussie helmer Peter Weir, later of Dead Poet’s Society and The Truman Show fame, sets up a career of haunting character studies with this flick. Chronicling the (possibly?) doomed eponymous outing of a handful of schoolgirls and their strict teacher, the film sees the group disappear into thin air without a trace.
The closing half of the film focuses on the fruitless search for the girls undertaken by their classmates and the local adults, never offering clarity beyond the film’s sparse and strange depiction of the afternoon’s events.
It’s just as well, given that a later published addition to the source novel aptly titled The Secret of Hanging Rock reveals that a girl simply walked into a gap that opened up in the rock and then closed again, Amigara Fault-style, whilst her teacher… turned into a crab.
Probably for the best that we kept it a secret, then.