Dying Breed: Critic Reviews

Even by the low standards of other horror-movie victims, the foursome here seem blithely clueless, always splitting up for no good reason and running headlong into ambushes.

If Geoffrey Hall's cinematography is eerily beautiful, capturing the isolation and subdued menace of the Tasmanian hinterlands, then there is little else in Dying Breed that, to quote protagonist Nina, "nobody's ever seen before".

The setting is the island of Tasmania rather than the Australian outback, but after WOLF CREEK and STORM WARNING, any city folk stupid enough to wander this far off the track deserve whatever they get - and boy, do they get it.

It tries hard to be horrific and gruesome, even introducing a bit of fashionable torture near the end, but only the most credulous will find it genuinely scary.

It's a textbook gorefest. Give it a miss if you don't like blood.

There is no civic responsibility in horror. You can insult whomever you like, so long as you make it scary. This one has a few good moments but not enough to rattle one's bones.

Right from the opening credits, with their strangely beautiful blown-up images of blood and the accompanying darkly rhythmic score, you're primed for something terrible to happen.

Grisly as it needs to be, Dying Breed is nevertheless quite a sophisticated horror film, layered with elements and peopled with leading characters who are more than stereotypes, thanks also to top performances.

Aussie mayhem with cannibalistic inbred idiots and upper middle class whitebread victims fails to set this film apart. But great fun nonetheless.

If you're looking for a horror flick that wants to give you a 'you are there -- and it's freaking miserable' vibe, this one should fit the bill quite nicely.