Director: Gerardo Chierchia
Year: 2021
Country: Australia
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature; Horror/Comedy
Plot:
Taking a trip together for Christmas vacation, a couple inadvertently decides to set up a special holiday meal in the center of a sacred Aboriginal site and release a deadly creature known as a Bunyip into the community, forcing the blundering duo to stop it before the creature takes out more citizens.
Review:
This was a generally enjoyable creature feature comedy. Among the more impressive features here is the highly entertaining setup that manages to offer some goofy action along the way. The initial starting point where the creature is given its origins as a creature of ancient Australian folklore known to the natives and thought to have been wiped out when the country colonized only to be awoken in modern times is a fairly solid and enjoyable setup here. It explains rather nicely all the different characters that come about to not only fill in great details of the storyline but also reveal the various rituals and performances that need to be performed in order to appease and stop the creature from continuing his rampage. This is quite fun and manages to set up everything quite nicely with being an enjoyable, light-hearted creature feature.
As well, there's also quite a lot to like with the creature being on the loose and running through victims in the area. Featuring the cold open of the creature attacking the worker at the creek and ripping him to pieces, it sets a tone almost immediately that is continued through the rest of the movie as the attacks follow similar routines. The practice centering around the creature appearing out of nowhere and looking to take advantage of someone doing something else or being otherwise preoccupied to make it able to sneak up on them unwittingly and subsequently tear them apart resulting in graphic indie-style gory set-pieces and bloodshed that come off well enough to keep the film moving along. The highly enjoyable and over-the-top finale has a lot of cheesy action and attacks that lead to a highly impressive conclusion that works really well here.
The other factor involved in the film, the films' unrelenting humor, and comedic banter, will be extremely polarizing for some. The slapstick gags, juvenile puns, scatological references, and gross-out moments might be too much for some to take or fall right in line with their humor and cause their antics to be highly amusing at times. Less amusing, though, is their general stupidity which is quite the opposite as it's funny at first in small doses but just goes on so long that it's hard to believe they've been capable of surviving as long as they have in life the way they have, which wouldn't have been an issue if it kept things contained in shorter bursts. However, the film is way too long and didn't need to be which brings this issue out even further as it can keep going with these constant idiotic gags and setpieces. The rest of the comedy is up to a particular viewer but that is a factor to be had here.
Overview: ***/5
A fun and enjoyable cheesy creature feature that has some generally entertaining aspects and a few factors that could be considered troublesome for some but fine for others, this one has a lot to like and to knock down about it. Give it a look if you’re comfortable with the kind of content here, cheesy creature features, or the creative crew while other viewers who aren’t into those factors should heed caution here.
Comments
Post a Comment