Red Billabong

It was one of the worst things "not just movie" I've ever seen. How this movie has got a rating of 6.5 is beyond me!! I don't want to waste any extra words on this shitty movie but because it is compulsory to write a minimum of 10 lines I would have to apologize for the following.

Awful Awful Awful.

I beg of you if you are reading this review not to waste two hours of your life watching this movie.

I don't normally write reviews but I feel it is my social duty to try and warn as many people as I can from watching this horrid thing.

What begins as a promising premise, and remains so is immediately hampered by Dan Ewing and Tom Pockock's meeting. These ex-"Neighbours/ Home & Away" actors, and I use the term 'actor' loosely, undo any hint at danger in this dreadfully written script. The photography is good, the music quite good, but the 'acting' is absolutely appalling. Seriously, these guys and gals need to take some acting lessons or better still, spend some time on stage in the theater where actors learn how to act, not just pose for the camera. If they are graduates of established drama schools like NIDA or WAPA, then these schools have failed and should be treated as "Soapies feed factories. They sure as Hell don't teach acting skills. Dreadful script predictable to the end; characters so 2D they don't need to open their mouths; acting - just appallingly bad. what an abysmal entry that could have been so much more. Alas, it is a SyFy Channel movie transplanted to Australia at best. To think Dan Ewing is considered "an up and coming star". If he is, we're in trouble. He cannot, I repeat cannot act to save himself....or indeed this film.

This is a two hour movie about an Aboriginal monster in which nothing happens for more than an hour. Then everything comes crashing down, but without any sense or reason. Has no one read the script and realized that the guy from the beginning could have explained and solved everything before anything bad happened? Also there were so many details in the beginning of the movie that went nowhere. Honestly the first half of the movie could have been 15 minutes. I can confidently suggest you skip to 1:15 and watch the film from there.

The acting is pretty bad, too. You can immediately tell Felix Williamson is the only professional actor there. The others weren't terrible, but the entire film feels like a student experiment.

Being a low budget film I didn't expect much in the way of special effects and in that regard they did a decent job, except the fight at the end which was ridiculous.

Bottom line: I have no idea why I chose to watch this movie, but I can tell you it was a bad decision :) This film has almost nothing redeemable. And sorry about making fun of Jessica Green, she's really cute and was decent in Outpost, but she is just an extra here.

I had high hopes of this flick as Australian creature features of the past such as rogue and razorback were well constructed. This however fell dry and flat with scheduled cliché Aussie songs and slang sayings. The generic character stereotypes were spot on the money for this sort of movie however they were mostly all overacted and generally unbelievable at best. as a fond fan of the horror genre this movie seemed to cross over to the action genre after approximately 50 minutes of boring character building. There were no scare scenes nor shock factor moments. There were no real comedic moments which are usually familiar within Australian films however I did find myself having a giggle at the terrible creature effects and the unrealistic script. The one star for this movie is attributed to the stunning Queensland scenery and most of the outdoor backdrop shots. To conclude, this could have been an extended episode of home and away which may have had a better reception among those viewers.

This film is such a shame. It had everything going for it, decent production values, visually interesting and a unique idea. All of this gets turned into a missed opportunity by a poorly executed script full of cliques, casual misogyny and lazy dialogue.

The main problem is that main characters (the brother) are just boring. The film doesn't give you a single reason to like or care for them. They're not unlikable people but they're far from being interesting or emotionally engaging enough for you go on this journey with them. Nor are they cool or charismatic enough for you to live a power fantasy through them. On top of this, all the minor characters are totally interchangeable and forgettable (which the expectation of the goofy girl).

The main plot (until the monster plot takes over) is about the leads working out whether or not to sell their family farm. Something you don't really want for a film that's touting it self as as 'the biggest Australian action film of 2016'. I'm guessing they didn't catch the absurdly silly 'Gods of Egypt'.

You would think that this plot would just be a mcguffin so a family drama can unfold between the brothers but… nope. And this's the problem. Internally, you have no idea who the two leads or what they really want. Don't get me wrong, characters in these type of films needs to be too deep but they do need some dept. Even Max is the 'light on plot' 'Fury Road' had internal desires and motivations. I.e. testing if he could trust and connect with humans again. These characters are just uninspiring cliques who spurt plot points until the monster turns up.

The first two acts just have too many 'talking head' scenes that could have been edited right down. But in its defense, the third act is pretty good. It's where all the action, CG and set pieces are but by the time it came around, I'd I'd stopped caring.

To be honest, the film really didn't bother me too much. We've all seen bad films. What inspired the review was the Q&A after the film in which the director spend the entire time attempting to humble brag about how great he and his film is. He used every opportunity to mention that it was a "Good, fun action film" It's really not. It's a technically sound, bloated film with a bad script.

It also made it perfectly clear he's an 'independent filmmaker and not Hollywood". I think that was clear to everyone from all the actors from 'Home and Away'.

And he really going to leave his mark on the Australian film industry; not with scripts like this he isn't.

The film fails at it's aspirations of being a light and fun popcorn film. Everyone clearly has talent and were trying there best. It's not the worst thing I've ever seen, but there are so many other great Australian genre film you really should be watching before this.