Dying Breed (2008) Movie Review, Trailer, Film Still and Poster

Australia 2008
Director: Jody Dwyer
Cast: Nathan Phillips, Leigh Whannell, Melanie Vallejo, Mirrah Foulkes, Bille Brown
Rating: R
Release Date: 6 Nov 2008 (Aus); 31 March 2009 (DVD)
Running Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

The Movie Review

Dying Breed film still 1


DYING BREED
Storyline:
Cast:
Ending:
Overall:

I used to have a close friend who lived in Tasmania, Australia about several years back, but every time I asked her about the place or the state capital, Hobart, she always seemed to avoid the conversation and opted to talk about another topic instead :) Let alone letting me stay in her place. So when a friend of mine who studied in Melbourne said he had been to Tasmania, I was so excited asking him about it and he calmly replied by saying it's basically a sleepy town and most of the buildings are not higher than two or three stories. Hmmm... Whatever that is, Dying Breed is at least could give me some portrayal of the state, not a very pleasant portrayal though for the residents but a good one for a horror feature.

In August, Jack (Nathan Phillips) and his girlfriend Rebecca (Melanie Vallejo) are accompanying Jack's Best friend named Matt (Leigh Whannell) to help Matt's girlfriend, an Irish scientist Nina (Mirrah Foulkes) to study the rare species of Tasmanian Tiger which inhabits a remote place in Tasmania near a creepy site called Pieman river. The name is not something made up out of imagination. Pieman is "seemingly believed" to have been named from a convict which had lived around the early 19th century and escaped the prison in Tasmania by means of eating human flesh AKA being a cannibal dude. Afterwards somehow, his name is sorta famous and be the staple name for almost anything in this small hamlet which serves as the gate to search for Tasmanian Tiger.

Unfortunately, Nina is not a very composed scientist because she's doing this research basically to complete what was left off by her sister who had mysteriously drowned while doing research there. Her condition is not helped by the fact that they have to deal with cave, tunnel and damp rainy season while the locals are seemingly holding something horrible from them. They probably should have left the Tasmanian Tiger alone, because the area has far more worse kind of creature... And Nina, Matt, Jack and Rebecca are definitely not ready for this gnarly surprise...

Dying Breed features something very unique in terms of location and historical accounts. FYI, Alexander Pierce was a real convict from Ireland and transported to Tasmania who survived the Tasmanian wilderness by eating his fellow convicts. This horror film is considered to be an Ozploitation film by some, Dying Breed was included in After Dark HorrorFest III. As usual, there is something fresh about Indie horror films featured by After Dark, and this time the filmmakers of Dying Breed combine Tasmanian landscape, Tasmanian Tiger and the notorious Alexander Pierce's hillbillies descendants in a concise 93 minutes.

Yup, indeed most of the scenes are something we've seen before in many horror movies and something that requires us to use more of our adrenaline instead of our brain, but that's one of the things that a horror movie should have achieve. And Dying Breed does it very well in giving us shocking scenes pertaining nudity and gore. Those two elements of horror movie will appear both separately and together... Particularly in one scene that is anything but titillating! I was looking for some fast-paced adrenaline-rush horror movie that would keep me engaged and I was glad to have picked Dying Breed for tonight, it does everything right in sectors that are important to a horror movie.

From acting department, we got Nathan Phillips (from Wolf Creek (2005) and Snakes on a Plane (2006) who is practically the soul of Dying Breed as he has the strongest character; Leigh Whannell the writer and actor of Insidious (2011); Melanie Vallejo who appears as the most charismatic character and Mirrah Foulkes who unfortunately has the most annoying character and her performance is a mixed bag. Nonetheless, it doesn't affect much the final quality of Dying Breed, which is a recommended viewing for horror fans.

> About One Creepy Dude named Alexander Pierce: The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce (2008) and Van Diemen's Land (2009).

>International Savage Hillbillies: the British The Cottage (2008) and the Irish Roadkill (2011).

> More of modern Ozploitation motion pictures : Rogue (2007) and Daybreakers (2010).

© iwan pranowo of Movielogy.com
Twitter: @movielogy
posted: Tuesday, 8 November 2011 08:43 pm