Long Weekend (1979)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

This is one of my all time favorites. Whilst it takes a bit to get going, what it sets up is an all time great finally. It's disturbing and intense. Beyond sickening in parts. The film borders and intense psychological thriller and horror, whilst showing probably the most realistic couple in the history of cinema. It's great, it's fantastic and it's as scary as hell. One of the greatest films of all time. Should be idolized by many. It has aged extremely well and continues to frighten in the present day. You will see nothing like this and you will be glad to never experience this in real life. Cold and disturbingly terrifying beyond belief.

Long Weekend is directed by Colin Eggleston and written by Everett De Roche. It stars John Hargreaves and Briony Behets. Music is by Michael Carlos and cinematography by Vincent Monton.Peter and Marcia, their marriage teetering on the rocks, go away for what is hoped will be an idyllic long weekend of camping by the sea. But as they disrespect nature, nature decides enough is enough...Australia has produced some excellent horror movies over the decades, sitting up with the best of them is this, an abject lesson in terror wrung out from a minimalist situation. What you think is just going to be a standard "when animals attack" movie, proves to be something of far more depth and consequence. The animals do indeed attack, after Peter and Marcia carelessly trample nature's beings and foliage, where she's a ball of anger and ignorance and he's a machismo searching buffoon, but the horrors are not merely confined to what old Mother nature responds with, the horrors within the couple's marriage strike hugely audible chords, even marrying up to events unfolding in this not so idyllic paradise the couple thought they had found.Director Eggleston doesn't just plunge the couple (and us) straight into terror, he affords time for the story to build, for us to get a handle on the warring pair. He also niftily throws up a grey area in the first quarter by having the first act of carelessness as being accidental, it could happen to you or I, in fact this passage of the film has tricked us into having some empathy with the clearly troubled couple, but then bam! Eggleston puts an axe in Peter's hand and a can of insecticide in Marcia's and the film shifts into another gear. Items are brought into the narrative and dangled tantalisingly, but the director isn't clumsy in reintroducing them at a later point in the picture, the timing is right because now, as the film enters the last third, it's edge of the seat time.With such a minimalist setting, and using only two humans and their pet dog, the makers need to make their key scenes work to an optimum level. Thankfully that is the case, from a swimming scene to one where Peter is alone at night by the fire being haunted by noises all around him, it's a film of genuinely scary scenes. This is where the sound department come in and do wonders, the sounds of nature are amplified considerably for total unnerving effect, while the ambient swells for build up sequences gnaw away at the senses. Both Hargreaves and Behets are natural, and excellent because of it, while there's some beautiful natural Australian vistas brought out of the screen by Monton's photography.This is not a bloody film, but it doesn't need to be, it's an exercise in sharp breath holding terror. Messages and metaphors are there to pay heed to, but mostly this is just bloody great entertainment. 8/10

I saw this film on the strength of how Tarantino raved about it as some kind of unknown classic on the Not Quite Hollywood documentary.The 92 minutes it took to watch Long Weekend seemed like 3 weeks.The film is well made but as it is such a thin, boring story with poor dialogue, bad acting and two main characters who are so unlikable that it was impossible to care about them, this was destined to be a real drag.I usually write longer reviews than this but I'm not prepared to give up any more time on this film.Avoid it.

For an hour-and-a-half, this seemed to be one, long dragged out film.Sure, the acting was fine for the most part and the premise was intriguing, but the pace was slow and repetitive.Worst still, the characters were absolute jerks. Now, it's perfectly fine to hate the characters, but the rest of the story needs to be solid and strong enough to entertain us as we root for, in this case, Mother Nature. Even though nature was a definitive character, its presence was second rate, on the fringe and never fullblown as we needed it to be. This really didn't leave anyone or anything for the audience to rally behind. Instead, the audience trudges through a slow-paced ninety-minutes waiting for the couple to get their due.This is a DVD best left on the shelf unless you have nothing better to do.