Last Stop Larrimah is the rare true-crime doc in which not a single tear is shed throughout its substantial two-hour runtime. That’s because the assumed-dead 70-year-old around whom it’s centered had a lot of enemies: nearly all of his neighbors in the titular tiny Outback outpost he lived in, in fact. As the doc reveals, Larrimah — population: 10 (11 before Paddy Moriarty disappeared in 2017) — was a pressure cooker of big personalities roiling with animosity.
Given the town’s tiny population, the film has the uncommon privilege of being able to explore the potential motives of every possible suspect — and it does, diving into vicious feuds over meat pies, hungry pet crocodiles, and the million grievances Paddy’s neighbors apparently harbored. But, though it presents all motives as equally plausible, it turns out one explanation is much more likely than the rest. That’s the problem here: like so many other true-crime docs, by the end, you can’t help but feel that the journey this takes is ultimately exploitative. Though it’s an entertaining portrait of eccentric Aussie characters, the film is much too devoted to doing just that — entertaining — at the expense of all its participants (including the unremarkable local police, for some reason), and so its late pivot into emotional profundity feels markedly insincere.
"Every scene, effective but long in the tooth, is built on the entertainment value of these oddball figures, sorta like “Tiger King” but less gross and exploitative."
— Robert Daniels
Nestled deep in the Australian Outback is the town of Larrimah and its 11 eccentric residents. When one of them mysteriously disappears into thin air, the remaining residents become suspects and a long history of infighting is unveiled.
A history of the quirky Australian Outback town of Larrimah and an exploration of the suspicious disappearance of one of its 11 residents.
If there’s one thing Last Stop Larrimah does well, it’s paint a colorful picture of the town and its handful of inhabitants. In spite of all of its sensationalism, two hours spent with this eccentric bunch means that the chief impression the doc gives — that Larrimah could never have been big enough to contain all of these characters — doesn’t feel like an exaggeration in the slightest. Though deferring any serious attempts to resolve the mystery till the end does ultimately cheapen it, this approach does give Last Stop Larrimah ample space to present the town as an unforgettable character in and of itself.
Absolutely NSFW — who knew Australian pensioners dropped so many f-bombs?
