I read Jane Harper’s The Dry when it first came out and really enjoyed it. So I was excited to go and see a special screening of the movie at Cinema Nova in Melbourne this week. It was also the first time I’d been near a cinema, or any kind of cultural institution since March (pre-COVID) which engendered a sense of novelty into the occasion.

Three members of a family are murdered in a small, parched, Victorian country town. This is the second significant tragedy to strike the town in twenty years and Kiewarra is seething with a hostile undercurrent of mistrust. The first incident involved the drowning of our protagonists teenage sweetheart twenty years earlier. Federal cop Aaron Falk returns to the town for the first time since the girls death to attend the funeral of his childhood friend, Luke Hadler, after he receives a note from Luke’s father that says ‘You lied. Luke lied. Be at the funeral’.

It is believed that Luke killed his wife and son, and then himself in a murder-suicide. When Aaron arrives Luke’s parents ask him to look into what happened. Aaron reluctantly agrees and finds himself trying to navigate local hostility to solve two crimes.

It is only four years since The Dry won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. It’s been a speedy process from book to film after filmmaker Robert Connolly read the book and loved it. Connolly’s filmography includes: All Men are Liars, The Monkey’s Mask, Three Dollars, Balibo, Paper Planes, and The Bank.

Eric Bana plays Aaron and there’s plenty of pensive, moody moments of pent up emotion as he struggles with his own inner demons as well as those of the town. Other cast members include Genevieve O’Reilly, (Glitch, Rogue One), Keir O’Donnell (American Sniper, Ray Donovan) and John Polson (Tropfest founder)

The film was shot in the Wimmera and Castelmaine and is a great one to see on a big screen to get that sense of the expansiveness of regional Australia. Due for release in January 2021.