It has been over a decade since Peter Weir made his most recent film, seemingly having receded into some form of retirement, despite being one of the most creative and compelling auteurs of the past half-century. Whether it was populist fare or more edgy, independent productions, Weir consistently produced work of exceptional quality, proving that his vision was limited to nothing other than the very limits of what a film can do. We can divide his career into various periods, and the one that has been most fascinating to me as a viewer have been his earlier works. The Plumber is one of his most interesting experiments – a brief psychological horror (running at a mere 77 minutes), produced for television in his native country, but would go on to become an underground sensation in cinemas across the world, with audiences gradually coming to discover the deceptive secrets lurking beneath the idyllic urban landscape in which this film takes place. We may need to get on the film’s wavelength, and it can be something of a challenge to fully embrace, but there’s very little doubt that The Plumber is an astonishing achievement, a hideous but profoundly effective thriller that offers us more discomfort and terror than nearly every film produced with many more resources. Unsettling, disquieting and purely chaotic, as was often the case with independent films produced by renegade Australian filmmakers around this time, The Plumber is a tremendously daring and provocative elegy to perversion that is far more effective in creating and curating an atmosphere of terror than many more traditional horror films.

No one could inspire terror quite like Weir – and the fact that he drew horror from the most unexpected sources is one of the primary reasons his early work was seen as so pioneering. Having his start in the movement affectionately known as Ozploitation, in which gifted young Australian filmmakers tested the boundaries of morality and decency by producing a range of perverse and terrifying films, Weir was immediately someone who stood out. While they are not considered directly aligned with the broad tenets of the movement, films like Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave are vital components in alternative Australian cinema, with their ability to draw out the most unsettling content from seemingly ordinary scenarios being one of the director’s strengths. However, The Plumber is a slightly different kind of horror film – rather than being a socio-cultural commentary on Australia’s storied past, it functions as a more intimate voyage into the darker side of humanity, something that Weir certainly has managed to capture exceptionally well over the course of his career. The film has its roots in social issues, namely around the economic strata that exist within urban spaces – centring the film on a moderately wealthy couple who work in academia (and thus can afford to have conversations around moving to Geneva, historically one of the most expensive cities in the world), and having their lives disrupted by a working-class plumber who has an ambigious past that clearly includes some degree of criminal behaviour that comes as a result of his desperation to move out of poverty, is peculiar but effective – and Weir plays on the dynamic between the two main characters, who engage in a battle for dominance, bound only by their desire to escape this particular situation, albeit for radically difficult reasons.

Despite the seemingly endless stream of horror films we receive every year, terror is not an easy business, especially when it comes to reinventing a genre that has existed longer than many others, going back to the earliest days of literature and oral traditions. The Plumber is one of the rare instances of a film not even marketing itself as a horror, but rather a psychological thriller that is so deranged, that its tension evolves into the most ghastly and fright-inducing situations. Like with Picnic at Hanging Rock (another unconventional horror film), Weir understands the importance of tone. The actual events are not all that important, but rather it is the atmosphere in which they appear that means the most. The Plumber is a genuinely unpleasant film, but in a way that is effective and meaningful, rather than exploitative. The viewer feels every sensation that goes through this main character’s mind as she watches her life get turned upside down by this menacing man, feeling some degree of responsibility for his actions, since she let him into her home in the first place. Weir captures this feeling of tension and uses it to gradually comment on the shift in the characters – they may not become unrecognizable, but both of the central figures undergo some changes as a result of their hostile relationship (which is essentially what the dynamic between them eventually becomes – they’re part of each other’s lives, whether or not they agree with it). It becomes very sinister, and the atmosphere of danger and near-certain peril is strong enough to keep us engaged from beginning to end. Any horror story that causes us to scream out in anguish on behalf of a character rapidly approaching danger has certainly achieved something of immense value, which is one of the most significant qualities of this film.

Using the word “disruptive” is probably the most appropriate way to describe The Plumber, since this is essentially a film about the idea of one’s life being disturbed by the presence of someone unwelcome into our space. Using this small university campus apartment as the setting, Weir constructs a haunting psychological thriller about a woman watching as a man forces himself into her life, going from a nuisance to a genuine threat. There are several conversations to be had about this very subject, whether it be looking at gender politics (since the idea of a clearly perverted man asserting his control over someone who he perceives as much weaker is integral to the plot), or the socio-cultural divide – and the director makes sure that every idea is keenly reflected with consistency, being thorough but not excessive. A large portion of what makes The Plumber so intriguing are the actors – the three leads were not unknown, but were more famous for their roles on local soap operas, so one can only imagine the surprise at seeing these normally more innocuous actors appearing in a film as demented as this one. Ivar Kants and Judy Morris are at the heart of the film, playing Max, the titular character, and Julie, the woman he terrorizes, respectively. They both bring a sense of disquieting darkness to the characters – Max may be a man of indeterminable origin and moral grounding, but his decision to take up residence in the home (and mind) of a couple who have made their careers off supposedly primitive tribes in the furthest corners of the globe, is just as exploitative – and while the film doesn’t foreground this theme, we can see a clear pattern of disdain Weir holds for the supposedly innocent protagonist who finds her home invaded by an unwelcome visitor who tears it apart and asserts his control. Whether intentional or not, this side of The Plumber is fascinating, especially in contrast to the decades of work that looks at Australia’s controversial history when it comes to Aboriginal populations, which serve as an undercurrent theme throughout the film.

Perhaps not the most nuanced approach, but one that is heavily steeped in interweaving cultures, The Plumber evokes several fascinating conversations that prove that this is not a shallow work of horror. Instead, it is a bold and compelling psychological thriller that takes us on an immersive journey into a small apartment that may be unassuming at first, but serves to be the platform for one of the most terrifying games of cat-and-mouse ever committed to film. We may tend to think of Weir for his more extravagant efforts (especially since he is one of the rare filmmakers who could infuse even the most populist fare with heart and elegance, sometimes to the point of almost betraying the very idea of a blockbuster), but it’s his earlier works that continuously pique my interest, each one of them being well-formed and developed to the point of being nearly too complex for only a single thread of thought, requiring multilayered discussions. The Plumber proves that scarce resources aren’t an obstacle, but a welcome challenge for thrifty filmmakers – the narrative is exceptionally strong, and the camerawork is incredible, with fantastic actors who are fully committed to their roles, and a sense of darkly comical humour that undercuts the unhinged terror that we see thrust all over this film. Surreal, terrifying and profoundly unsettling, The Plumber is an immense achievement that stands as one of the gems of the Ozploitation movement, an era of filmmaking that pushed boundaries of both art and decency, and opened doors for many filmmakers across the globe to realize their vision without being restricted to stringent conventions around morality, proving that films about terrible people in precarious situations can lend themselves to great art without requiring a neat resolution, which is something this film is particularly adept at demonstrating.