Carnifex

I liked this old fashioned horror film, that reminds me the seventies, eighties very easily. It's never boring, using though the same methods for scaring the audiences, so many clichés, but we are in a horror film, not a comedy,and the director took no risks in trying something different. It's spooky and that's all. The producers were sure to obtain what they wanted, to receive money from their investments, and the best receipe is not to take risks and give the audiences what they want. They want sh...give em sh...They want predictable plots, give em predictable plots and that's it. Formatted tastes from the audiences and fomatted results on screen. The audiences will provoke the collapse of creativity. That makes me puke, sorry.... I am in such distress.

Not that bad, fairly well filmed and with pretty nice sight of the Australian bush, but it suffers from the modern need to preach you to death, to the point that it just get insufferable.

So first you have to go through literally half the movie getting preach mercilessly about ecology and the evil of human, 45 minutes of characters walking in the forest giving you life lessons and guilting you to oblivion. Without counting the also very modern need of writing every male character as a goofy caricature unable to do anything but be a joke (it could have passed fairly in this movie if not every male character were not just simply useless without exception).

Then comes the usual bad writing of lazy horror, with the final 30 minutes, where every character becomes dumb for no reason, running around in the dark and forgetting they are professional who should know how to handle a situation involving a predator. And of course the predator himself which literally a scene after being describe as an ambush and stalker predator (and behaving like one), suddenly decide to become stupid and pursue the main characters like any dumb generic predator.

In the end, like I said, nicely filmed, but lazy writing suffering from the modern tropes of having to preach you instead of entertaining you.

Australia has 2 kinds of horror: that which involves mostly torture on screen, and the creature type.

Now I have to say, as much as I dislike the torture/gore genres, I absolutely love monster movies. So here is where Australia, land of plenty, shines. They brought us good such productions ever since Razorback (1984) and continued doing so with, Rogue, Black Water and now Carnifex. I think of all these mentioned, Carnifex had the smallest budget, and you can see that here, but other than that, I have to give it credit.

It got itself some nice views, good actors that delivered, one different monster than what I've seen before, all wrapped in a little in the back forest horror that worked quite nicely for what it is.

Thus I shall recommend this one, because horror isn't just mainstream, it's also productions like this one, delivered from passion, that maybe doesn't make the biggest splash, but it's still a nice way of spending 90 minutes.

All in all, definitely recommended for creature movie fans, it works quite viewed late at night. Cheers!

I enjoyed this movie, even though eventually it seems like it falls flat.

First of all, I enjoyed the scenery, forest trip, campfire, nature views, light conversations - I liked that part, it seemed happy and easy, and entertaining to me.

I liked the actors and the characters, they played well.

The suspense build up was good, felt some "Predator" vibes there, you know, at some point the pressure grew like characters were being stalked and in danger, while being unaware of it. That was executed well as per my opinion.

The ending is really when the movie should've risen to its peak, but instead it fallen flat. Some bad decisions have been made during this movie creation, I guess. So, characters suddenly became silly even though as biologists they should've probably known better how to act around predators and kept safe.

Moreover, as the creature is in the center of this movie, it should've been well written and thought throw, etc.

But instead, we get this creature with overall bad design. I'm not talking about the CGI (although they were pretty lackluster in half of the scenes), but mostly its behavior, motivation and history. There is no justification in movie itself about how this could've all be possible.

So, yes, I enjoyed this one.

Still, I was a bit disappointed, because I really saw the potential for it to be so much better in the end with just a little more work.

CARNIFEX follows three passionate conservationists, Grace (Sisi Stringer), Bailey (Alexandra Park) and Ben (Harry Greenwood), as they venture deep into the Australian outback in hopes of recording evidence of devastation caused by the wildfires. The trio soon discovers a terrifying species - the Carnifex - that has been previously undocumented, and they quickly realize that they are now the ones being tracked.

CARNIFEX is a missed opportunity. Despite a talented cast, the story fails to take off. After a cliched opening of someone being attacked by something unseen, the first half of the movie plods on with boring and stilted dialogue and where little happens apart from the characters peering up into the trees. The documentary maker in the story hardly ever has her camera running and never does when any documentary maker would do so. The acting is unconvincing (although the dog does a decent job), and the story did not have enough suspense to keep me engaged.

The second half of the movie picks up with a couple of intense action sequences, but even then, it feels too formulaic and predictable. The effects work is satisfactory, but nothing stands out.

The bush setting is beautiful but underutilised and left me with little more than a couple of jump scares. The soundtrack also fails to engage, being sparse and lacking in tension.

CARNIFEX is a forgettable horror flick that won't leave you too traumatized or thrilled. It's an adequate timewaster, but uninspiring. If you're looking for a true horror experience, you'd be better off checking out something else.

CARNIFEX is simply a shallow and forgettable movie that doesn't live up to its potential. It boasts beautiful cinematography of the Australian bush but fails to offer anything unique or interesting. It's not worth your time or money.