Dying Breed

Well, horror is certainly not my genre of choice, but Dying Breed is tolerably well done and should appeal to cinema-goers who love to mix their suspense with a goodly dose of blood and gore, though fortunately in this film the suspense outweighs the gore.

The plot makes use of two highly appealing and speculative “legends” – one that maybe the Tasmanian Tiger (declared extinct in 1986) is still alive and breeding somewhere in the unexplored wilderness of the Apple Isle, and secondly, that the notorious Pearce (who was hanged in 1824 for eating his fellow escapees) may have left some equally carnivorous descendants (unfortunately, a fairly specious premise!) The fact that both these stories are based in reality, makes the film all the more scary, and certainly there’s plenty of tension established from the outset.

We all know the rules of the genre, and when the foursome get into a dinghy, and the camera gives us an overhead view of them drifting down a remote river to the accompaniment of some creepy music we know what we’re in for. When the intrepid tiger-chasers meet the locals, we are put in mind of films like Deliverance and The Hills Have Eyes, and no doubt Taswegians will not be happy to know the old myths of “six-finger territory” are being well and truly exploited in Dying Breed.

Nature as a threatening force is used to good effect. The surrounds in the Tasmanian wilderness are at once beautiful and menacing. When a storm strikes and the crew take refuge in a cave, the surrounding bush at night is used to maximally frightening effect. When really nasty things start to happen to our adventurers it is at night, and the sense of tension is constant. To the director’s credit, the film avoids showing too much cannily relying on the principal of what we don’t see is the most scary. The remoteness and inaccessibility of Tasmania is also used to great cinematic effect, and any plans I may have had to trek there have cooled significantly since seeing this film!

Plenty of old favourite tricks are used – descending into a cellar with axe in hand, a creepy ferryman with an even more off-putting little daughter, a very suspicious pie-making factory – the list goes on. And of course appropriately tense music is employed to add to the already nasty events. The characters of the four questers are also well portrayed, although Jack’s overly larrikin nature gets a bit grating after a while.

Dying Breed, however, is no Wolf Creek. Having a bunch of dubious locals, determined to do anything to keep their “breed” alive, doesn’t carry quite the same power as one psychopathic murderous bushman. Whilst for me the film sits in the “OK” department, fans of the horror genre should find this worth seeing.

Want more about this film?

Want something different?