Dying Breed

Seth Rogen did a stand up piece about how playing GTA brings out a really dark fucked up side of you. Being a horror fan sometimes does the same thing. In a interview Stephen King talked about how he gets morally queasy over the idea of audiences rooting for carnage. Well I'd hate to disappoint you Stephen but here we are. I'm not only craving violence in this film but I want someone to be turned into a meat pie! But that's entirely the film's fault....just look at the poster:

How can someone not....ya know. Dying Breed is an Australian horror film that follows a lot of American conventions but has plenty of distinctly Australian qualities and does a bang up job including Australian folklore. Well actually it's not really folklore, it's straight up science. The motivation for our protagonist Nina and her friends is not a crazy weekend of pot smoking and fornicating (well that does happen). Its for the purposes of science, Nina is trying confirm the alleged sightings of the extinct Tasmanian Tiger (which has actually occurred). The second piece of Australian history that's at the film's core is the story of real life cannibal Alexander Pearce who inhabited Tasmania when Australia was used as penal colony for the UK. The implication is that the cannibals that inhabit the story are all Pearce's descendants.

Despite 'Breeds' clever efforts a lot of the film still feels familiar. The story of Pearce only provides context but in the end there isn't much to distinguish the film from any number of man eaters in American horror films. The film's emotional core is what is really special. Nina's personal intrest in finding the tiger is especially important because it was her deceased sister who uncovered the creatures paw print. Nina is the girl with a past, her sister disappeared during the expedition and apparently underwent a very gruesome demise. The theme of the film is how something survives by staying hidden. Couple with the ambiguity that surrounds Nina's sisters' death, there's an impressive sense of dread about the unknown.

The Cannibals also have motives that are actually more sinister than simply eating everyone. The Cannibals in part seek to preserve their subhuman species and the most nihilistic aspect of the film is the revelation that Nina's sister was actually used to for the monsters breeding process. Unfortunately most of this unfolds in a pretty conventional fashion once everyone starts getting killed off, there's some fun variations with their being disagreements among the clan (that should have been the film, a family of cannibals debating how to carry themselves in the 21st century).

The film ends on an incredibly dark note. But as dark as it is it actually has me a little upset that things didn't actually go a little further and just show us somebody getting turned into a goddamn pie! Now because the movie didn't hold up its end of the bargain I have to sit here feeling like I'm some kind of sociopath? Fuck that.