A peculiar ghostly experience aside from the frequent and grotesque close ups of people masticating. The film starts with a supercilious officer slurping down some slimy bits of what looks like sea food (mollusks?) and moves onto the timber cutting scenes where the guard tries to cheer up the convicts - 'freedom is work lads, finish this and we go back'. Well, they might have listened to him. Instead, for the next two hours, we are stuck in the forests of Tasmania with the convicts after their 'escape', their numbers quickly diminishing as they take to slurping down tasty bits of each other. Again, as with too many films where there are a lot of male characters together - another is Carpenter's 'The Thing' - it is often difficult distinguishing one guy from the other, especially as most have beards here.. Yes, I kept flinching at the horrendous violence, but can't say I cared much for any of the victims - aside from the first, who seemed the most interesting and charismatic. In that respect, despite great images of trees in the wind and evocative music, it was a bit of a slog, just waiting for the next one to die, and knowing the historical outcome anyway. (It didn't help that my version lacked subtitles and the melancholic narration was in Irish!). But the most memorable thing here is the overall mood of despair and doom in a washed out landscape - largely filmed in gray to add to the sense of coldness and desolation (in fact it's probably beautiful and sunny most of the year!). Was it also intentional to not include one single animal in the entire film:? Perhaps the sight of another living creature would have lightened the mood so it was avoided (aside from the mention of one snake being seen). In fact, we never leave the company of these demented convicts who were better off staying prisoners and serving their sentences. Even when a small group of three break away and leave the main group of nutters, we never see these three again - no respite from our time among the cannibals. Meanwhile the constant beauty of the nature around them made me think: yes, lucky country if the company were a bit cheerier.
