2:37

Review by Clint Morris

If you couldn’t get your breath after witnessing the frightening final few moments of Seven, all those years ago, or still have nightmares about the skinless freaks in Hellrasier II : Hellbound (for lack of a better example), then best to steer clear of 2:37 – it features one of the most harrowing, and most disturbing, scenes in a film in a long time.

Worst of all, it plays real. If you plan on seeing it, you’ll probably need to mix a few of those Stilnox tablets in with your Vodka tonight, otherwise you won’t be sleeping a wink.

But don’t let a little thing like an in-your-face suicide scene put you off seeing one of the best Australian films of the year. If anything, writer/director Murali K Thalluri has simply succeeded, if the sequence is hard to watch. He wants it like that. That way, it’ll stay with you. It’ll make you think. Importantly, it’ll make everyone either think twice, or at least consider, the effects of suicide.

Loosely based on the story of a friend, Thalluri‘s film is set over the course of a day, where we meet a string of troubled – one might be pregnant, another is hiding the fact that he could be gay, and another is fighting the memories of being sexually abused – high schoolers. At 2:37 PM, one of them (we don’t know who, until the final moments of the film) will lock themselves in a room and end their life.  

Because we do get to know all the characters before the ‘event’ occurs, it makes that end scene all the more harder to watch. In some respects, it’s like watching a friend slit their wrists. It’s not easy to watch. But again, it’s meant to affect.  Films with a strong message like this – it touches heavily upon the notion that ‘you just can never truly know what’s going on inside some people’s minds’ – shouldn’t be easy to watch, not if they want something to sink in. A lot of the time, films that tackle important subjects like the one here, just skim the surface, and as a result, we take away nothing. Not the case here.  

It is doing the job of an important community service announcement, informing the parents/teachers/those that aren’t aware of the teenage troubles of today, that these things do happen – and it’s something that shouldn’t be dismissed.

By no means is 2:37 an entertaining movie. No way. Instead, it’s an enlightening, well performed (all the youngsters are rather superb in it, even when their dialogue isn’t at its most convincing), and topical feature, which at best, signals a global cry for help.

3.5 out of 5

2:37
Australian release: 17th August, 2006
Cast: Teresa Palmer, Joel Mackenzie, Clementine Mellor, Charles Baird, Sarah Hudson, Xavier Samuel, Gary Sweet, Daniel Whyte
Director: Murali K. Thalluri
Website: Click here.