I love aussie horror movies, the backwoods setting has provided ferocious fun in "Wolf Creek", "Rogue", "Storm Warning" and many others - for those reasons "The Marshes" had been sitting on my watchlist for years before finally coming out. Sadly, it doesn't join the top echelon of Australian horror movies as it is, for the most part, either lacking or slacking.
"The Marshes" starts out fine, introducing nearly all of its characters in the first 10 minutes & showing promise with a decent, sun-kissed cinematography. All is still somewhat okay as we find ourselves in the bushes and the marshes, the aesthetic pleasures provided by Australian nature and wildlife keep it going, along with a decent lead performance by Dafna Kronental. Soon enough I realised the story won't go any further than it already has come, the cinematography starts turning in a big ball of close-ups, shaky camera movement & low-budget solutions that are not exactly 'cutting it'. Furthermore, the last ~40 minutes, which is the action part, takes place entirely during bright daylight, which might've worked on paper, but the result is - it didn't help the mood one bit. The original score's kinda alright, though. Kinda. Oh, and the villain, well, is an inspiring, (for the most part) blurry and shallow supernatural killer figure. As a result of all the flaws, "The Marshes" inevitably runs out of stuff to offer, clothes what it has in shabby filmmaking choices & eventually starts dragging, before ending on a respectable but highly underwhelming note.
I wanted to like "The Marshes", I did, but it just turned out to be so underwhelming. Yet another proof that cool cinematography and awesome locations can't save a movie if it doesn't have story, substance and important genre elements. I'd much rather recommend another re-watch of both "Wolf Creek" movies than this. With a heavy heart, my rating: 3/10.
