Monster prize for local filmmaker

BANGALOW filmmaker Blake Northfield’s latest movie Fear Below has been named Best Australian Feature Film at Monster Fest in Melbourne, Australia’s premier festival for cult and horror cinema.

Set in Australia in 1946, Fear Below offers a fresh spin on the shark thriller, following a team of professional divers hired to locate a sunken van in a river, only to be confronted by a territorial bull shark.

The film was shot on the Murray River in Echuca and Moama on the NSW-Victoria border in 2022, before flooding forced the production to relocate to the Screen Queensland Studios in Brisbane and Goondiwindi.

Northfield, who founded Bronte Pictures in Sydney in 2015 before moving back to the area he grew up, said it was a challenging film to make.

“Between the floods, location move and many other challenges we faced along the way, seeing the film succeed means a lot,” he said.

Northfield said “a collection of old Woodlawn boys” were involved in making the film, including Cristian Brown, Tom Merritt, Peter Flannery, Danny Baldwin and Luke Surace.

“Some of our Byron local staff in Peter Flannery and Luke Surace were crucial in getting the film back up and running,” he said.

Northfield said Fear Below was a fast-paced adventure film that takes the audience to a place visually that may be foreign to most.

“The film is a unique spin on a classic genre,” he said. “It’s a character-driven story — a period piece with a lot of heart and great tension.”

Bronte Pictures’ locally-made film Take My Hand, which was released in cinemas in August, is premiering on Netflix in December.

The company also recently wrapped filming on its next film, Beast of War, in Binna Burra and Brisbane and has moved into post-production.

Fear Below is being released in early 2025.