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Dying Breed
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| Year: |
2008
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Director: |
Jody Dwyer
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| Stars: |
Nathan Phillips, Leigh Whannell, Bille Brown, Mirrah Foulkes, Melanie Vallejo, Ken Radley, Elaine Hudson, Sheridan Harvey, Peter Docker, Boris Brkic
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| Genre: |
Horror |
| Rating: |
  5 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
A few years ago the sister of Mina (Mirrah Foulkes) was discovered drowned in a Tasmanian river, and ever since Mina has wanted to find out what really happened to her after they lost contact. The perfect opportunity has arisen as her boyfriend Matt (Leigh Whannell) has arranged an excursion into the wilds of the Tasmanian wilderness to see if they can track down any sign of the island's famed, and supposedly extinct, tiger - not an actual big cat but more of a stripy doglike creature. Mina is less than pleased to see that Matt has brought along his obnoxious childhood friend Jack (Nathan Phillips) too, but it is his car they are driving...
You will be less than pleased to see Jack as well, as he practically ruins what could have been a neat little shocker from Australia. There's nothing wrong Phillips' performance, it's the script which makes him act the way he does which is the major drawback as you cannot imagine anyone with a personality like that is somebody who Mina could stand to spend half an hour with, never mind a weekend. Not only that but he has an bright and attractive girlfriend as well - Rebecca (Melanie Vallejo) - straining credibility even further. Maybe he's really rich or something? Whatever, the character's odium leaves the scenes he's in as an endurance test.
Luckily, he disappears before the end, but not soon enough to have left the movie as more irritant than anything else. With a dim view of Tasmania's inhabitants, what you have is one of those American backwoods horrors or thrillers like Deliverance or The Hills Have Eyes (especially the remake of that) set Down Under, you know, like international Aussie hit Wolf Creek. A lot like that, as Dying Breed was patently going for the same audience, though with little of the acclaim because, well, those who caught it ticked off the influences in their mind as the story unfolded and found this wanting in comparison. It wasn't badly made exactly, it's only that the sole thing you were left wondering about was whether they'd go for happy ending or sad ending.
Not that either would have wrapped this up with much satisafaction, and not just because of the Jack character. Once you come to notice that the main reason anything happens in this film is down to the fact that it happened in other, better films, you sit back in your seat with a sense of resignation and hope against hope that they have at least conjured up something novel for the suspense. When that doesn't appear to be transpiring, there's not much to prevent the viewer slipping into apathy about how these four potential victims end up. You can see where the production was heading, utilising aspects that had been successful elsewhere, but they fail to do much good with them.
So we have the quartet driving through some attractive scenery, even though it's in the pouring rain for most of the time - one thing Australian horrors have in their favour is that landscape - and stopping at a place where the Tasmanian Tiger was supposedly spotted, coincidentally where Mina's sister was found dead as well. The beast genuinely has been extinct since the early twentieth century having been needlessly hunted to the point where few believed there were any left, though the story that there have been some spotted over the decades is one which refuses to go away, and the film draws parallels between the four investigators and the fate of the animals. Or is it drawing those comparisons between the animals and the inbred killers who nobody thinks are actually out there? It's a bit of a muddle thematically, and while things improve when Jack leaves the picture, by then the damage has been done. Music by Nerida Tyson-Chew.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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