Just saw Jody Dwyer's Dying Breed. What an excellent Australian Horror flick it is! It could well be one of my favourite Australian Films of the year.
Four young cryptozoologists go to check out Western Tasmania in search of ye ol' Tasmanian Tiger. Little do they know they are stumbling upon the ancestors of Alexander Pearce, the famous Australian ex-convict, bush ranger and sometime cannibal known as the 'Pieman'. Suffice to say fine dining is loosed on the Pieman River as a group of Deliverance style in bred Tassie freaks hunt down our hapless Tiger hunters. Dying Breed is well cast with Leigh Whannell (Saw) giving us a great version of the metro-sexual out of his league in the wilds of Western Tasmania and Nathan Phillips (Wolf Creek) as a roustabout larrikin hunter. Whannel is an excellent leading man and should branch out from horror and do other serious work. The two girls Sally MacDonald and Melanie Vallejo are good too. Especially the later, when she is strung up and dismembered Cannibal Holocaust style out the back of the Pieman's shed. I'm sure Leigh Whannell must have been showing the director Cannibal Holocaust, as this scene certainly bears the imprint of that classic film and the Dying Breed scene is very well done in its brutality. The film has various very effective set pieces in a cave, at night in the bush, out the back of the killer's shed, on a bridge at dawn, etc. All shot effectively and scored very nicely. The ominous Tasmanian landscape evokes a darkness akin to what DH Lawrence said about the great primordial emptiness of the Australian bush. The film should travel well as the Aussie accents aren't too harsh, and one is a Irish accent. The family of inbred freaks are memorable and varied in their motivations and actions.
Dying Breed is a great edgy genre piece that is one of the first to appear in the new wave of horror cannibal films, so its ahead of the game world wide, also. I would have to rate it right up there with Rogue from last year and Acolytes, Horseman and Rats and Cats.
Why did they not enter it in MUFF? It would have won some awards! Check out the posters. I like the stylish one, while the second one with a gory pie will entice the teen market.
Stylish new Ozploitation is on display, that gives hope to the future of the Australian Film Industry!
