The Dustwalker

This is so bad I only watched half of it. This movie is an abject lesson in how not to make a sci-fi/horror film. Contains mostly awful acting, awful characters, awful editing, awful story and awful CGI. It's just awful. The only redeeming feature was the magnificent scenery of the Australian outback.

Please do not waste your time watching this turkey. There are thousands of movies better than this.

This is a small film, but it is still engaging. Reminded me of The Crazies but only set in a small Australian town and the source of the madness appears to be alien in origin. This has resemblance to a zombie film but more of 28 Days Later than Romero. Different, not a "great" film, but yet I found the main characters engaging. Not original and I predicted the ending fairly fast, but nonetheless I enjoyed watching this.

The poster is very cool. Too bad it has nothing to do with the movie. I don't know if I've seem a more poorly edited film. I realize the budget was low, but that has nothing to do with putting the scenes together in such a way that a story makes sense. Anytime something happens we either cut away in the middle or jump in after it's happened. There is no narrative here, just random scenes that tell us nothing about what is happening. Then with virtually no setup a completely new element randomly appears, but other than one initial reaction none of the characters seem the least bit curious how it relates or what they should be doing about it. If my assumption about the plot is correct there is an interesting story in here somewhere, but it's lost due to a weak understanding of story structure and the aforementioned poor editing.

Not the worst I've seen, and that seems to be the best thing I can say about it. It's a low budget film, so I can deal with bad special FX's. But the acting was bad, and characters were unbelievable. The story itself wasn't too bad, with a better director it might have succeeded. A writer should not direct their own work, especially amatuers. It was very slow, all the way through. Not really worth a watch.

Just watched a Hulu movie called Dustwalker I'm not entirely sure why. At first it was Lovecraftian psychological horror. (Look at the image art on the movie poster and dvd cover for reference to why I thought it'd be more Cthulhu-related.) Then the 10 minute mark hit and the plot got thrown out the window. Too many plot devices that were never explained and left unanswered for the duration. The first one was that town's only cell tower is down...which we find out because the tech pulls out his cell phone and calls A friend in town...who answers /on her cell phone/. This isn't even a spoiler since /NEVER COMES UP AGAIN/. Also, I HATED the ending. I'll spoil that below. Spoilers start here:: I have a few questions: 1. Why is the movie called Dustwalker? The creature never goes near the dust storm (which itself is a one-and-done plot device that never gets explained. The thing goes underground as it's primary mode of transportation. 2. How the hell does the ALIEN speak and understand English within a couple hours after arriving on earth? 3. Can we talk about how the creature is half scorpion, half Resident Evil dog thing, but Is also a centaur? 4. The ending. Ugh. So. The entire movie is spent with survivors running from people gone murder-hobo who exist only to kill all humans and infect them with alien DNA or whatever. Then big bad comes along (the third of 4 times we see the creature), and takes all of the infected people, puts them in a pit and freaking /IMMOLATES THEM/ with its "now I'm a dragon-scorpion-demon-dog-thing" magical fire breath. That's it. The whole premise of the movie sucks so hard that the writer literally figured it'd be easier to just set it alight than try to fill in all of the plot holes.

If you're a fan of really campy, tropey bad films, go find one that doesn't suck and watch that instead. Overall, I give this movie a 2/10 stars, and that's just because I like psych horror (though this one down played the horror aspect.)