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What’s up Sorry State readers? Another month has flown by. Halloween is this Thursday and I’ll be driving up to Baltimore for two nights of Billy Strings and company performing the music of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and to say I’m excited would be an understatement. Not only is it one of my favorite movies, but it also has one of my favorite soundtracks for a movie and ‘ol Billy always puts on a hell of a show for Halloween. My girlfriend and I will be dressing up as Ash and Linda from Evil Dead and I’m excited to see other people’s costumes. Since the month is almost over, I guess this will be my last write up about a movie and this one isn’t even really a horror movie. It’s probably the least Halloween-y one I’ve written about, but I still think it’s worth mentioning. Continuing from last week with the theme of psychological terror, this week I’m writing about the 1971 Australian film Wake in Fright directed by Ted Kotcheff and written by Evan Jones. Like some of the other movies I’ve talked about this month, I caught this one probably a month or two ago here at the Alamo in Raleigh and instantly loved it. I had never heard about it before going to see it, but the description for it sounded very appealing and I trust Raleigh Alamo’s Weird Wednesday picks. This film follows a young Australian school teacher who, because of a financial bond he signed with the government, must teach for two years at a small school in the outback. He plans to go visit his girlfriend in Sydney for the holiday so he heads to the nearby town of Bundanyabba (AKA The Yabba) so he can catch a flight there. When he arrives, he heads to a local pub where he meets a police officer who befriends him over a couple of pints. The officer then takes him somewhere where a room full of people are illegally gambling on a game that’s essentially just flipping a coin. Our main character joins in and happens to find some luck and win a couple games, probably making more in those games than he had all year teaching. He sees his way to financial freedom and paying off his bond in one fell swoop, put in all that money he made and let it ride. He loses it all in two rounds. The ultimate gambling sin: never wager what you can’t afford to lose. Now penniless and stuck in The Yabba, he turns to the people of the town and the bottle. The rest of the movie is watching this seemingly put together man unravel in the heat and exhaustion of this mining town and its wild inhabitants. Drink all day, drink all night. If you’re hungover in the morning, keep drinking. Very similar to The Lighthouse, which I wrote about last week. Maybe it says more about me that movies like these freak me out the most. This story actually seems not that far-fetched.=; maybe it could even happen to YOU! Okay maybe not, but all I’m saying is if I was all alone in the middle of the outback, there may be some overlap (maybe minus the kangaroo hunts.)