Australian film-makers are notorious for offering movie-goers fun times that turn out to be bad times and bad times that are no fun at all. But even in the lengthy annals of feel-grim Australian film, Blessed must set some kind of record.

Here’s a rough checklist covering some of what you can expect: child abuse (sexual), child abuse (emotional), teen shoplifting, breaking and entering, granny bashing, The Stolen Generation, pokie addiction, William McInnis as a fat loser, parents stealing from each other and blaming it on the kids, a homeless girl wandering the streets while having her first period, a teenager masturbating under duress so it can be filmed – this takes place in an abandoned building, just to underline the sleazy aspects – mild racism, teen suicide, a mother moonlighting as a naughty nurse, sinister cops, and a higher body count than you’ll find in the recent horror movie Orphan.

It might seem harsh to simply list all (well, most) of the sensational aspects of this story out of context, but this film provides no real context (apart from the occasional shot of the Melbourne skyline) for this onslaught of grim living as it shows us various troubled teens in the first half before moving onto their equally troubled parents in the second hour. It’s fairly obvious that most of the parents have let their kids down, but by the time things start to come together – usually with someone visiting the morgue to identify a body – it’s hard not to wonder if being hit over and over in the face with a rolled up newspaper whose front page screams LIFE IS TOUGH was really the best way to get this message across.

Based on the 1999 play Who’s Afraid of the Working Class, what’s really annoying here is that this is far from a complete loss. Pretty much any individual scene you’d care to name is impressively written and acted, and almost every moment where two characters interact is a gripping and dramatic character study. The performances across the board are excellent, whether from big names like Miranda Otto, Deborah Lee-Furness, and Frances O’Connor, or up and coming young actors like Sophie Lowe (Beautiful Kate), Anastasia Baboassouras and Harrison Gilbertson.

Unfortunately, director Ana Kokkinos (The Book of Revelation) is content to work scene-by-scene without establishing any noticeable tension, drama, solid characterisation or shifts in mood across the feature as a whole, creating a film that’s packed with memorable moments that eventually blur into a long, boring nightmare. And it can’t even get that right: rather than crank things up so that the steady stream of inevitable horrors becomes laughable or appalling, or even turn things around to provide a limp feel-good ending, the climax just… fizzles out.

Bad things happen to some people, good things happen to others and while that might just be like real life, real life is a lot more varied and engaging than this one-note procession of lame issue-based horrors.

Blessed opens in cinemas on Thursday, September 10.
You can view the Blessed movie trailer here on TheVine.