After Dark Horror Fest 2009: ‘Dying Breed’

Tom:

Lionsgate’s HORRORFEST: 8 FILMS TO DIE FOR festival is back for it’s third year this week at Ronnie’s Cinema. I’m old enough to remember when “direct-to-video† was not an option for low-budget horror films, when films like these would haunt drive-ins and run-down city theatres. Most of these 8 films at this year’s Horrorfest would otherwise never play a single date theatrically, so Lionsgate should be commended for assembling this mini festival. I just wish they did a better job of promoting these as this year’s attendance, like last year and the year before, was sparse. Judging by the three films I’ve seen so far, they’ve done a good job of choosing films of variety and, mostly, quality.

For me anyway, this year’s HORRORFEST started off well with the 2008 shocker DYING BREED, a scary Australian take on a familiar horror genre that anyone who enjoys films like THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE or WRONG TURN will want to seek out. The premise and exotic location may remind viewers of the recent WOLF CREEK (it even has that film’s star Nathan Phillips), but DYING BREED is a much rougher ride.

Zoologist Nina (Mirrah Foulkes) and her three attractive, adventurous friends Matt, Jack, and Rebecca (Leigh Wannell, Nathan Phillips, and   Melanie Vallejo) venture into an Australian island jungle. Ostensibly the plan is to prove the existence of a rare Tasmanian tiger, but really Nina is trying to solve the mystery of her sister’s death there eight years earlier. After a disturbing visit at a grungy hostile Tavern/Motel, the group soon finds themselves in the wilds, hunted by cannibalistic descendants of local legend “The Pieman† aka Alexander Pierce (a real 19th century figure, there’s even a Pieman River in Northwest Tasmania).

There’s nothing terribly original or complex about DYING BREED. The sense of dread and foreboding in the build-up is familiar and heavy-handed, including lots of subjective “someone’s watching† overhead shots. The tiger subplot is disappointingly   abandoned early ( I kept bracing myself for a tiger attack that never happened). The pre-slaughter banter is shallow and the four young leads are the usual sketchy mix. Jack, the trouble-making hothead, and his sexy and passive girlfriend Rebecca are obviously doomed early on. These are criticisms that could apply to most horror films though, as DYING BREED is mostly an exercise in mood and scares, and that’s where the film succeeds. The horrific set-pieces involving hunting knives, crossbows, bear traps, and false teeth are intense and often genuinely terrifying. There are some surprises. Heroes Nina and Matt attempt to   turn the tables on their pursuers in the expected way, but don’t exactly succeed.   The ultimate fate of Nina’s sister (shown in flashback) is quite disturbing and the film has a realistic downbeat climax that stays with the viewer.   The gore quotient is high enough to appeal to Fangoria readers without lingering or going over the top. When the primary Pieman kller is finally revealed, he is truly a frightening villain (and I wonder why this movie wasn’t given the more obviously commercial title PIEMAN). First-time   feature director Jody Dwyer, while not reinventing the wheel here,   has an obvious knack for this type of material.   Dwyer has made, with DYING BREED, a slick, scary, unpretentious horror film can stand on it’s own merits and the organizers of Horrorfest were wise to include it in this year’s line-up.

Travis:

I would really love to see more genre films from Australia get theatrical screen time here in the States, but it seems it falls into the same black hole of American theatrical distribution of the many other foreign film markets that repeatedly produce quality movie. What amazes me however, is that Australian films are, for the most part, in English and not subtitled, leading me to wonder why we don’t see more of them here. ‘Dying Breed’ is yet another example of a decent genre film from Australia that’s going to likely get lost in the midst of endless direct-to-DVD horror films, relegated to online forum banter between the most devoted of horror movie geeks. [I further emphasize this with the 2006 black comedy/horror movie ‘Black Sheep’ released here on DVD by Dimension Extremes. Actually, it’s a New Zealand film, but still…]

‘Dying Breed’ is written and directed by Jody Dwyer and stars writer-actor Leigh Whannell (Saw I, II, III). The film begins with an opening sequence that sucks you into the historical back-story and influence for the movie’s modern tale of terror. Upon exiting the opening sequence, we are thrust into modern day as a young couple fly into Australia for a trip to Tasmania. Matt (Whannell) and Nina (Mirrah Foulkes) meet up with Matt’s macho-testosterone friend Jack and his girlfriend Rebecca. The purpose of the trip is for Nina to search for and hopefully document the Tasmanian Tiger, which she believes is not extinct. Nina’s true mission is to complete this research that her sister began before she mysteriously died eight years prior to this trip. It’s a round-about way for Nina to bring some kind of closure to her grief.

Jack and Rebecca are very stereotypical characters and it’s no surprise that they become little more than “axe” fodder for your traditional horror movie plot development. While the first half of ‘Dying Breed’ can move a bit slow at times, it still manages to maintain it’s appeal and slowly leads you into the heart of the story’s darkness. About halfway through the film, the story’s twist begins to reveal itself resulting in a diminished “shock” impact. Despite this, we are still rewarded with some disturbing details and some grotesquely gruesome scenes to test the strength of our stomachs.

The story pulls from two legendary Australian footnotes of history, combining them to create an under-stated hybrid that doesn’t needlessly over-blend the two separate ingredients. No, there’s now half-man/half-beast, no shape-shifting or supernatural beings. Instead, the film takes the idea of the Tasmanian Tiger’s disputed status of extinction and uses it as a plot device and to some extent, is used to create the classic Hitchcock McGuffin effect to draw the audience into a direction other than where you’ll ultimately end up. This is combined with an Australian origin story that lives on with urban legend notoriety, which has Alexander Pearce (aka The Pieman) being the only prisoner to have ever escaped the British island penal colony of the 1800’s, now known as Tasmania.

‘Dying Breed’ touches on multiple sub-genres within the genre of slasher/horror films, features a handful of Australian/Irish accents that add a cool element to watching this film and has realistic and effective special effects to make the gore convincing enough to create discomfort. Above all else, I felt the “true” ending of the movie is beyond icing on the cake and reaches the status of the cherry on top. The little girl named Julia (Bianca Cutrona) is the subject of a twist that revels itself simply and briefly but effectively in the final moment of the movie, creating that wonderful lingering aftertaste of freakishness that makes good horror movies good. I attended the 5:30pm screening on Friday, January 9. The next screening will be at Wehrenberg’s Ronnies 20 Cinema at 5:30pm on Monday, January 12.

[Overall: 3.75 stars out of 5]