In Vitro was filmed entirely on location across the Southern Tablelands and Monaro over five weeks in early 2022. Photo: Shelley Farthing-Dawe.
If you’ve ever felt the windswept paddocks and skeletal trees around the Snowy Monaro had an eerie vibe to them, now there’s a film to match it – joining a quiet lineage of productions that have tapped into the region’s stark, cinematic power.
Three years after film crews rolled into rural properties near Cooma and the outskirts of Goulburn, the Australian sci-fi thriller In Vitro has officially landed on streaming platforms – giving locals the chance to see their landscapes reimagined as a haunting, near-future dystopia.
Filmed entirely on location across the Southern Tablelands and Monaro, the feature was shot over five weeks in early 2022.
It’s now available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play and Plex following its global digital release through Well Go USA Entertainment.
Premiering at the 2024 Sydney Film Festival, In Vitro earned strong critical praise for its unsettling tone and departure from the dusty outback aesthetic often used in Australian post-apocalyptic films.
With its vast plains, skeletal trees and piercing natural light, the Monaro – particularly around Cooma – became the ideal setting for a slow-burn story of environmental collapse and emotional unravelling.
Set in a climate-ravaged near-future, the film follows Jack, played by Ashley Zukerman (Succession, The Code), and Layla, played by Talia Zucker (Lake Mungo) – a couple trying to keep their cattle farm afloat as drought deepens and desperation sets in.
Jack, a former geneticist, turns to experimental biotechnology to save their land, but what begins as an act of survival quickly spirals into paranoia, grief and detachment from reality.
While the story is fictional, the setting is unmistakably grounded in the region’s distinctive topography.
According to A2Z Filming Locations, most of the exterior scenes were filmed on private properties in the Monaro, while interiors and township shots were captured around Goulburn.
Local crew and extras also supported the production throughout the shoot.
“We needed a place that could look both timeless and post-apocalyptic,” co-director Will Howarth recently told Screen Anarchy.
“Cooma had these wide, wind-blown plains that felt like the end of the world and Goulburn gave us that rural domesticity – farmhouses, sheds, paddocks – places that feel lived in but isolated.”
For Zucker, the landscape did more than frame the story, it helped shape her portrayal of a woman on the edge.
“There’s a harshness and beauty to those spaces — being there helped me feel Layla’s isolation and desperation in a way a studio never could,” she told distributor Well Go USA.
Much of the film’s hypnotic tension is thanks to cinematographer Shelley Farthing-Dawe (Boy Swallows Universe), who used long tracking shots, aerial footage and natural light to immerse viewers in a quiet, slow-building dread, picking up a gold award in the Feature Films – Budget $3 million and Over category by the Australian Cinematographers Society (ACS) in 2024 for his work on the film.
For locals, spotting familiar shearing sheds, fence lines and town buildings, including a decommissioned fish farm, on screen offers an extra layer of intrigue. Or some comfort.
But In Vitro is more than just a stylish eco-thriller; it’s a quietly powerful showcase of the region’s cinematic appeal – one that’s already attracted other high-profile productions.
Earlier this year, Hollywood thriller Apex – starring Charlize Theron, Taron Egerton, and Australia’s own Eric Bana – filmed primarily in the Blue Mountains, but also near Canberra and Bowning.
The first and second season of ABC comedy hit Austin also filmed in Canberra.
And if you’re in the mood for more local scenery without leaving the couch, there’s plenty to stream:
Jindabyne (2006), starring Gabriel Byrne and Laura Linney, was filmed entirely around Dalgety and Jindabyne. Somersault (2004), starring Abbie Cornish and Sam Worthington, was also set in Jindabyne, with key scenes shot in Belconnen and on Lake Burley Griffin.
Director Matthew Holmes’s 2016 Australian bushranger film The Legend of Ben Hall was filmed primarily in Victoria, but some scenes were shot near Jugiong, in the Hilltops region.
Leah Purcell’s The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson (2022) made striking use of the Monaro Plains and Adaminaby, while The Daughter (2015), starring Geoffrey Rush, Sam Neill and Miranda Otto, was filmed around Tumut and Batlow.
And, of course, the 1960 classic The Sundowners, starring Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr, cemented Cooma, Nimmitabel and Jindabyne’s place in cinematic history.
Whether it’s a Hollywood blockbuster or a haunting indie slow-burn, one thing’s clear – the eerie beauty of the Snowy Monaro continues to cast its quiet spell on filmmakers and audiences alike.
