Red Billabong

Synopsis: After their grandfather’s mysterious death, two estranged brothers, Nick (Dan Ewing) and Tristan (Tim Pocock) inherit his Queensland farm on the edge of wild bushland. With an offer to buy the property from shady land developer Mr Richards (Felix Williamson) the two brothers meet at the farm to consider their next move. But before they can decide, they’re visited by an old friend of their grandfather’s, Mr Garvey (Gregory J Fryer) who tells them the property was promised to his local indigenous tribe. Things are further complicated when Tristan’s drug dealing mate BJ (Ben Chisholm) suddenly arrives with a ckombi van full of friends including Nick’s former girlfriend, Anya (Sophie Don), and Rebecca (Jessica Green) who takes an instant shine to Tristan. When Rebecca goes missing after swimming in the billabong, it becomes clear that something quite terrifying might be living in the bush. But is it real, or is it a hoax designed to force them off their land?

Why do hideous monsters always crave young attractive (often bikini-clad) women? It’s a question I’ve often contemplated since I first saw The Creature from the Black Lagoon on Deadly Earnest’s late night horror movie show back in the days when Channel Ten was Channel O. Here, again, a supposed Aboriginal legend purports that a mythical creature trapped in a cave must mesmerise three young women in order toregain its power and run rampant around the countryside. The mythical creature in question is the Bunyip.

It’s an interesting challenge to try and reclaim the Bunyip from the domain of children’s books where it is often a more friendly and comical character, and restore it to the status of a demonic creature that lurks in the billabongs of Aboriginal myth. First time writer/director Sparke has a good crack at it but issues of tone let down the film which sits uneasily between a full-blown, scary monster-horror flick and a comical parody of the genre. In other words, it doesn’t seem to know whether it wants to hang out with Cameron & Colin Cairnes’ 2013 comedy, 100 Bloody Acres or Jennifer Kent’s 2014 horror sensation, The Babadook. In the end, it seems to have a bet each way and suffers for that lack of tonal certainty. The special effects by Julian Summers are effective and the monster, when we eventually see it, is convincing and suitably terrifying but Chisholm’s highly exaggerated comic performance as BJ and Williamson’s hammy,overly melodramatic villain sit uneasily with the more serious and, at times, palpable tension that is created between the two brothers and the moral dilemma they have over the fate of the farm.

At almost two hours, the movie overstays its welcome. It takes a long time to get going, has a good schlocky-horror patch about two thirds of the way through and then takes a long time to resolve itself.  Sparke’s screenplay tries to juggle a lot the competing demands: the family story between the two brothers and their deadbeat dad who turns up late in the day: the love interest between the brothers and Anya and Rebecca; the good guys versus bad guys story; the indigenous Bunyip hunters versus the evil (and surprisingly militarised) developer; and, of course, the nature of the Bunyip itself. But, for me, the real problem was not knowing whether I should be finding all this funny or scary, and that’s not a good place to be in a horror flick.

 

 

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