Director: Chris Sun
Year: 2018
Country: Australia
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Following a strange series of encounters, the residents of a small town in the Australian outback come to find that a wild, voracious boar is running loose in the area killing whatever it comes across and forces them to team up with a local's visiting family from the US to stop the creature.
Review:
This here was quite the overall enjoyable effort. One of the more enjoyable aspects to this one is the fact that there's an incredibly strong setup here involving the different individuals around town. This one makes the various members around town likable and relatable, from the friendly banter between the pub patrons and the few other locals who show up around town and the father-daughter owners who all have a great relationship with each other. There's several scenes of them hanging around at midday laughing, telling stories to each other and generally behaving as if they've grown up with each other all their lives and are content to laugh and bust on each other which adds a wholly likable group of characters. As well, that also provides a nice sense of comedic relief in various parts of the film cutting back to their interactions in the pub which are quite useful in not only delivering key plot points but also some laughs to justify their inclusion.
This early setup has the great counterpoint of making the slow expansion of attacks by the pig all that much more fun. From the quick opening shot of the boar attacking the car stopped on the side of the road watching the fleeing animals shown through the creatures' POV to the shots of the creature taking out the farmer trapped in barb wire and finally leading to the big attack scene on the couple camping out in the wilderness, the attacks here are really engaging at building up a solid sense of the pig in the community. Featuring several smaller-scale attacks in the overall sequence and giving a full-on view of the pig's potential sense of scale and destructive capabilities, these are all really enjoyable bringing together the mix of stalking with the pig's-eye-view shots as well as the gore in the ambushes and aftermath that are shown here.
The last really enjoyable aspect here is the wholly thrilling and ferocious final half that really has a lot to like. With the discovery scene featuring the pig storming the family out in the wilderness where the chaos of the situation and the shock of seeing the creature take out several members of the family unexpectedly offer up several thrilling moments here. Likewise, with the family members left forced to a secluded farmhouse to defend themselves and finding the boar crashing the building leading to several strong brawls around the ruins of the building with the creature and then heading into the stellar showdown with the creature, this action builds itself really well and ends this on a really strong note. Coupled with the stellar animatronics for the boar which makes it look absolutely terrifying with it’s massive size and overgrown features, there’s plenty to like here that holds this one up.
However, it does have a few minor problems. The main issue to be had is with the finale where it goes overboard with reintroducing survivors of the situation that didn’t need to be alive at the end of the film simply for the heartwarming conclusion. The characters it chooses to bring back have no real business doing so which is simply to have the uplifting finish with these people also having survived, and is made all the more improbable seeing what they survived from since these were seriously wounded individuals that never should’ve survived their encounters in the first place. As well, that highlights the issue of the main family being out of harm’s way for an extended period of time and only come across the boar at the final half-hour mark, leaving the first two-thirds to be the fun locals hanging out and the boar picking off people on the outskirts of town without directly involving the family which is rather odd. On top of some weird pacing problems during the attacks that go on much longer than necessary, these here are what hold this one back.
Overview: ****/5
With a lot of rather impressive elements here from the ferocious main monster and plenty of action surrounded by a fun cast interacting around the mayhem, this is a strong and enjoyable effort. Give this a shot if you’re a fan of these type of killer-animal-on-the-loose films or creature features in general, while those not into the genre should heed caution here.
Comments
Post a Comment