slickstu

A group of Friends, Matt (Leigh Whannell), Nina (Mirrah Foulkes), Rebecca (Melanie Vallejo) and the thoroughly obnoxious Jack (Nathan Phillips), head to the Tasmanian wilderness to continue a search for Thylacines begun by Nina's ill-fated sister a year prior. What follows is a thriller which owes much to Deliverance in terms of setting and tone, indeed the title of that film is even name-dropped.

What is it with horror films that they persist in drawing one of the protagonists as an obnoxious moron? Here that position is filled by Jack who is so repulsive that the audience resents not only him but also his comrades for being so gullible as to allow this idiot to accompany them into the wilderness. The end result is that we couldn't care less for this band of meat pie fodder and thus the emotional core of the film is severely undermined. Wolf Creek suffered from a similar antipathy towards is central characters but that film was saved by a sterling performance from John Jarratt.

The editing does the film no favours. It is sometimes confusing for its use of inexplicable flashbacks; for instance a collection of blood stained cotton balls evoke a "memory" of Nina's sister having her teeth pulled but clearly such a memory is impossible as Nina knows nothing of her sister's demise. Also, every shock is set up previously by an establishing sequence with the shock shot as it obvious conclusion. For example, a sequence revealing the disappearance of the films incumbent Deliverance-style spooky kid is followed by a shock shot of said kid turning up in the presence of our heroes (surprise, surprise!) A reversal of these shots would probably have been more effective. However, the production quality is excellent and it's great to see local genre films getting access to decent budgets.

Dying Breed shares another attribute with Wolf Creek and that is that it's largely forgettable first half serves merely as a transitory mechanism to get us to its second half which is the guts of the film (so to speak). But also like Wolf Creek, when the film hits its stride, it becomes a very effective horror film which culminates in a nicely executed false ending which surely won't disappoint the fans of this genre. Sadly the films fine conclusion will, no doubt, open the door to a series of very poor opportunistic sequels.

6.5 out of 10

BlackDuck

Hi slickstu,

Is that mate of yours who used to pick pockets and then claim he found the wallets out of jail yet?.

Yours with memories,

B duck.