By Terry Sherwood
The debut feature from the Canberra Australia filmmaking, the horror-comedy Snatchers arrives with guts literally and figuratively. Directed and written by Craig Alexander, who also is one of the actors, this is a satirical commentary on capitalism as it is an orderly pictorial removal of body parts. While it sometimes gets carried away by trying to be too funny Snatchers delivers enough sly silliness, humor, and oddity
The picture is as listed in the credits, inspired by The Body Snatcher short story by Robert Louis Stevenson, yet more like Repo The Genetic Opera minus the song sung by all actors if you don’t count the nasal version of the jazz standard ‘It had to be you”. Set almost entirely within a hospital’s dimly lit underbelly, plastic sheeted for budget control, Snatchers follows two medical orderlies (Craig Alexander and Justin Hosking) who conspire to profit from the illegal organ trade. Their side hustle robbing the recently deceased for black-market harvest goes wrong when one of the corpses rises up from the table. From there, things unravel into twitching limbs, dark secrets, and moral collapse.
The film’s most striking image is Hannah McKenzie’s “corpse,” whose presence dominates much of the films beginning Laid out on a gurney with her hair splayed like a funeral halo, McKenzie is a dead ringer for Olwen Kelly’s haunting figure in The Autopsy of Jane Doe. That reference doesn’t feel accidental. Like Kelly’s Jane Doe, McKenzie imbues stillness with eerie opaque eyes in this case with limited non gratuitous nudity as in André Øvredal’s film.
Visually, Snatchers. for all its gallows charm is an uneven almost frantic in moments. Musical score adds something with moments appearing like an illustration of lyrics. Some scenes lean too hard into absurdity, undercutting moments of real dread, while others aim for poignancy yet feel out of place. The film’s satirical voice, particularly its commentary on economic exploitation and class is sharp in concept yet not in execution as the narrative leans too quickly into gore or slapstick
Still, Snatchers is funny, with moments played with a deadpan with slightly reminiscent of Shaun of the Dead. The performances, particularly by Justin Hosking and Craig Alexander, have a buddy look: flawed, desperate, and human that sometimes gets muddled up in rapid absurdist dialogue.
Hannah McKenzie, though, is the film’s focal point. Even in her stillness, she commands the frame that feels both tragic and terrifying. When she begins to speak, move around and creates more chaos, even an aspect of sexual tension between her the two desperate body snatchers. Her delivery, her look, her yes and her intense stare while beguiling runs the show even if the narrative strays into effects of allergic reactions, and events of the past. The ending with its crushing change is something that you perhaps don’t see coming as it almost tries too hard. Snatchers is messy, unpredictable yet has a charm as a situation that goes off the rails or in this case off the gurney.
Snatchers screened as part of Raindance Film Festival 2025.
Bloody Flicks 