Dying Breed (2008)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Memorable, crazy movie

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Dying breed is again a movie in the tradition of Hills Have Eyes. So it has to be rather good to jump out of all those rip offs but luckily it did. It isn't a movie that makes you go jump in your settee, the problem is that it takes too long before it all really start happening (around 50 minutes). Once it all happens things are starting to get rough and the killings are not that gory but well done. I have seen the uncut version so I have seen it all. My only problem is the fact that most killings are done off camera. You see what is going to happen but the ripping of the flesh or cutting or whatsoever you will never see. But what it makes good is the fact that they use an ending that isn't positive. If you are used to watch bloody flicks than I should recommend it but if you are a gore buff than leave it, there are rougher things out to discover.

Inbred and hungry cannibals... Out of their element young folks... Yeah, it's safe to say we've all seen it a dozen times before and "Dying Breed" is more of the same.Director Jody Dwyer brings this familiar story to Tasmania with most of the same repercussions. However, the cinematography is stunning and the acting is well above most in the genre. Cliché? Absolutely... You pretty much know exactly what is about to(and does) happen through-out the film. The gore is admirable, yet the individual performances by the all-Aussie cast is the movie's saving grace.Certainly worth a viewing, if for nothing more then the great acting and the wonderful scenery.

While I'm not sure that I'd watch Dying Breed again, I have to admit that I enjoyed it through the first time.There are some great landscape shots in this movie and, overall, I felt the atmosphere was creepy, lending itself well to the dark tone of the picture. There was some suspense and a bit of gore as well. However, there was nothing really new or interesting in the plot. Similar movies have covered the same material before (Wrong Turn, perhaps to a lesser extent even The Chainsaw Massacre movies...) and although there's a link to an actual historical figure, it's a pretty weak link and there's no new twists to make this unique.The characters are all pretty unlovable, so there's not much to relate to in that department.The production values are high, so I have to recommend this over some of the other After Dark Horror Fest films I've seen. I feel it's a solid five; flawed but very watchable.

I always laugh when a horror movie begins and ends with facts to read. Even if the filmmakers are alluding to actual events, do they honestly expect that the plot itself is deserving of a history lesson? At the start of "Dying Breed," we learn about Alexander Pearce, an Irish convict who in 1822 escaped from a penal colony on the Australian island of Tasmania; in 1824, he was caught, tried, and hanged for murder and cannibalism. In the film, he's given the nickname The Pieman, although we now know that this is actually a reference to pastry chef Thomas Kent, another Tasmanian inmate who also escaped imprisonment in 1822. I can understand why writers Michael Boughen, Jody Dwyer, and Rod Morris gave that name to Pearce--students of "Sweeney Todd" know that cannibalism is a lot more fun when it's coupled with the skill and artistry of a baker.This movie also tells us about the Tasmanian Tiger, a carnivorous marsupial that was once common throughout Australia and Papua New Guinea. As of today, some believe early European settlers hunted this animal to extinction, the last one dying in captivity in 1936. Others believe that a select few survived and continue to exist in isolated groups within the bushland of Tasmania. Sightings have been reported, although there's no actual proof of anything. There is, however, the ominous fact that many hikers have gone into Tasmania, never to be seen or heard from again.What exactly do these two bits of information have to do with one another? "Dying Breed" attempts to make a connection, although it's weak, probably because there's no chemistry between them. Yes, there is that fact that both are part of the fabric of Australian legend. And then there's one of the film's most crucial subplots, in which the creepy townsfolk of an isolated Tasmanian village show just how far they will go to keep certain traditions alive; the obvious symbolism is that the townsfolk are struggling to survive, just like the Tiger. But that doesn't amount to very much in the grand scheme of things. Ultimately, two very different ideas are at work in just one story, and that's bad because they don't really belong together.The plot focuses on an Irish zoologist named Nina (Mirrah Foulkes). She has now made it her mission to find a Tasmanian Tiger, which she believes still exists. The proof is in a photo of a paw print taken by her sister, who was also in search of a Tiger before dying mysteriously eight years ago. Nina's superiors refuse to fund a new expedition, so she has to rely on her Australian boyfriend, Matt (Leigh Whannell), who relies on an old friend named Jack (Nathan Phillips). Once Nina and Matt arrive in Tasmania, they travel with Jack and his girlfriend, Rebecca (Melanie Vallejo), into the frighteningly isolated village of Sarah, where it's always gray and rainy and the locals all have a distrustful, psychotic glint in their eyes.The first three-quarters of this film could have worked as a character study, but alas, everyone is so broadly drawn that they come dangerously close to turning into cardboard. Nina, for example, is no more nor less than what the screenplay requires her to be at any given moment; when she doesn't need to be persistent, then she's curious, and when she's not curious, she's scared, and when she's not scared, she's lost somewhere between driven and confused. In other words, I didn't really know who she was. Matt, on the other hand, is so passive and even-tempered that he's just shy of completely boring. Rebecca is just an extra character, serving no real purpose other than being a companion for Jack. And as for Jack, he's probably the most developed character, which is annoying since (a) he isn't the main character, and (b) he's unlikable. He seems to lack the ability to keep his mouth shut when it's most necessary, creating tension between him and Nina, which in turn creates tension between Nina and Matt.The horror element is there, but it's not much of a saving grace since so many of the clichés I grew tired of a long time ago are still being used. Only in this kind of film would anyone even consider exploring a shack located miles from anywhere. And not run when they discover that it's a House of Horrors. And actually investigate a stove when it appears that the contents of an abandoned pot are about to boil over. The only thing that prevented this story from bottoming out: A lack of sex-crazed teens stupidly wandering off alone while calling, "Hello? Is anyone there?" Still, clichés are better than back-stories that don't make a whole lot of sense. I watched the Tasmanian townsfolk in various scenes, and I got that they were driven to keep to tradition, but somehow, I couldn't make sense of the tradition itself, which involves both feeding and breeding. What exactly is director Jody Dwyer trying to tell us here? That one deadly species has gone extinct, only to be replaced by another deadly species? If that's the case, then why even bother bringing up the Tasmanian Tiger? Why not focus on just the townsfolk? I would have liked "Dying Breed" a lot more had it known which story it wanted to tell. The Pieman or the Tiger--make up your mind. I'd go for The Pieman, because God knows that, in a horror movie, watching someone eat a meat pie is better than reading the history of an elusive animal.Chris Pandolfiwww.GoneWithTheTwins.com