Snowtown

In the poor Adelaide suburb of Salisbury, 16-year-old Jamie Lucas Pittaway lives with his distressed mother Elizabeth Harvey and his brothers—including half-brother Troy—who rapes Jamie. One day, his mother’s boyfriend takes indecent photographs of the boys. When the police are reluctant to intervene, Elizabeth is contacted by Barry, a gay cross-dressing man who introduces her to John Bunting. John, who despises pedophiles and homosexuals, begins to harass the boyfriend with shocking acts until he moves away, and gradually assumes the role of Jamie’s father figure. Barry tells John the names and addresses of paedophiles in the area, and John crafts a wall full of pictures and notes about each one, including chilling lines such as:

I’m coming for you.

Jamie finds himself drawn into John’s homophobic and violent tendencies, unable to escape his charismatic and intimidating dominance. On one occasion, John, aware that Jamie is being raped by Troy, urges Jamie to stand up for himself, and in pursuit of this, gives him a gun and has Jamie shoot his dog. Meanwhile, John influences the rest of the neighbourhood with his extreme views and separates Barry from his younger boyfriend Robert. Only Troy seems to dislike John. Barry soon disappears, leaving behind an answering machine message saying that he is going to Queensland. John brings Jamie in as the neophyte member of his small team who “bury men.”

Shortly afterward, Jamie visits his drug-addicted best friend Gavin with John, who takes a dislike to Gavin. Later one night, John and Robert take Jamie into his garden shed and show him the bodies of Barry and Gavin. Distressed, Jamie lashes out at John but remains under his influence. Later, John and Robert torture Troy, and Jamie then kills the brutalised Troy in an act of mercy. Now desensitised, Jamie assists John in carrying out several murders. John and his team store the bodies in the vault of an abandoned bank in the town of Snowtown.

Jamie is persuaded by John to lure his step-brother Dave to the bank building, ostensibly to look at a computer for sale. Jamie drives with him to the town, vaguely conscious of what he is doing, and leads Dave into the building, where he is met by John and Robert. Unaware of what is going on, Dave watches Jamie shut the door of the bank.

Against a black screen, captions reveal that South Australia Police discovered the remains of eight people stored in barrels in the bank vault of Snowtown on 20 May 1999, and the following day, John Bunting and Robert were arrested.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 15:32