Outback

The poster is misleading. There aint any scene where a woman is lying on a road n a snake nearby.

Very slow n boring movie.

The movie wants to make us believe this really happened in 2015 to a young American couple, but from everything I can find out it appears to just be a fictional story, based on an urban legend.

The young 20-something couple travel to Australia for a "get away" trip, on the flight over he presents the ring, he asks her to marry him. But she doesn't appear ready, she says she loves him but hasn't decided yet what she wants to do with her life. That gives a bitter start to their trip but they try to make the best anyway.

Their troubles start when with inadequate preparation he relies on his phone GPS to guide them to a destination. However it seems to give them faulty guidance, they basically get lost and from there the poor decision just mount and mount.

I watched it on DVD at home and I must admit I skipped quickly through the scenes where he drank his urine.

I have watched a lot of movies, averaging roughly 200 to 250 new movies a year for the past 20 years. I can recognize a poor movie when I watch one and this is a poor movie. I find myself wondering "why was Outback made?" If I were to arrive at a summary it would be "preparation is everything when traveling to a strange place." They did not, they made stupid decisions, they suffered the consequences. It doesn't take 90 minutes to deliver that message.

I didn't find anything particularly interesting in the characters or their predicament. I could not recommend this movie to anyone.

This is difficult to rate, because on one hand the film-making craft, vision and sound, is fantastic, but on the other hand the characters are morons, thus difficult to connect with. The male twice as dumb as the female. The decisions they make in the story are so thoughtless and stupid one can have little empathy or sympathy for them. They are 100% responsible for their own downfall.

There's some truth in this with the GPS. In the countryside we once had similar issues using GPS around the town of Trentham. The thing was making us go up dirt roads, driveways and so, completely ridiculous. They don't perform well out there. There's heaps of country-side in USA. They should have known this. And why didn't they have a real map as backup? This is just one of dozens of things they stuffed up on. I had no urge to want them to survive they were so brainless.

Why waste time making a film where there is no real challenge except from their own badly functioning brains?

Novice director and writer Mike Green makes his full length feature film debut with Outback, his resume having preceded only a handful of short films - of which this one probably should've been.

It's an 86 minute long slow paced true story about some relationship arguments and tons of walking - I mean tons, in the constantly same barren setting of the Australian Outback, adding a few critters here and there. The two leads didn't help much in elevating any of the films suspense - of what little there was. Taylor Wiese as Wade was pretty much bland and monotonic, and unconvincing when the dramatics began, and Lauren Lofberg as Lisa was annoying right from the start. Any chemistry between them seemed forced and fake. It's not like they're inexperienced actors, but it sure seemed like this was their first ever role. I'm sure it was mostly Green's inexperience on how to direct his cast.

The cinematography was decent, and I really enjoyed the soundtrack, and although the score was fitting for the most part, it was obnoxious when the dramatics began. This story was very repetitive and uninteresting to be a full length film, unless some Hollywood dramatics were added. I respect Green's decision to keep it accurate, but it should've been a short film, or at best a 1 hour long TV film - considering the lack of available substance that needed lots of filler to reach its runtime.

Ignore the 10s, as they must've been written by the crews family, and ignore the 1's, as they must've been written by trolls. This movie is peak mediocre, 4 is a perfect score.