Kadaicha

Residents of a small housing development are being butchered off after finding strange rocks on themselves. Seems that the houses were built upon an old graveyard. Low budgeted flick has an interesting enough premise, but falls very short of its goals mainly due to an extremely low budget, shoddy camera work and a weak, below par cast. Rated R; Violence.

Every once in a while Australia produces a good straight-up horror-movie (not really considering many fine ozploitation genre-mixtures with this statement). RAZORBACK, a fine monster-movie for example. KADAICHA, however, isn't really one of those excellent horror gems. The teenage inhabitants of one particular street in a suburban area get in deadly trouble when the spirit of an ancient Aboriginal voodoo-priest wants revenge. Aparantly the houses in that street were build on an Aboriginal burial ground (what else did you expect?). The spirit of the voodoo-priest manifests itself through animals. This flick is amusing at times and gets a little boring and pretty bad at others. A 'didgeridoo' seems to be a horrifying instrument, because it can be heard on the soundtrack every time something supposedly scary is about to happen. I'll give KADAICHA some extra points because it tries hard, and the death-by-spider scene was amusing. But you'll have to be in the mood for it when you watch this stuff, otherwise you might dismiss it as nonsensical crap.

Australia's answer to the first two POLTERGEIST films with a couple teaspoons of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. Now give it a stir. You get the same sort of supernatural story, pinching plot details here and there (damn those greedy building developers), as the outskirts of suburbia meets Indigenous dreamtime horror. A group teenagers living on the same street in a suburban housing development find themselves haunted by the spirit of a Kadaicha Man (an elder aboriginal witchdoctor) through their dreams, which when they awake, they are in possession of an ancient crystal stone. This souvenir symbolizes that they are targeted for death.

To begin teenagers are killed off one by one in what looks like freak accidents caused by dangerous wildlife (and the body count is very small), while minimalistic in execution with its tame use of cutaways and aftermath mutilation; there's a charm to these coarse attacks and decent effects. Outside the slightly eerie first death, I thought remaining lot were silly. Still the natural sound design along with the piercing didgeridoo / synth score do a better job implementing the uneasy atmospherics around the thrills.

Obvious plot tropes are used to advance the story, engineer the threat and to keep you invested, yet for the majority of the time these docile characters seem less concern in trying to figure out how not to become the next victim. Some of their actions are questionable, even their own state of mind when they begin dropping like flies. Then at the backend the material rushes through and decides to throw out the overt shocks, changing its M.O to ghostly apparitions, poltergeist activity and possession leading to a flimsy power play over the life of the final girl. It's everything, but the kitchen sink... done on the cheap. Stereotypical performances don't hurt and the script might not be the greatest, but you get amusing lines like this;

"A dog savage enough to kill a teenage girl. A spider with the fasted venom in history and now a giant eel that thinks it's a boa constrictor. What... the hell... is going... on?????"

The delivery of the line was just priceless. Actually a lot of the choice dialogues, and sincere banter, especially between the coppers got a laugh from me.

Not the best Ozploitation had to offer, quite clunky, but you could do a lot worse.

Nowhere can cinema claim a monopoly on tried and true horror tropes: a cast of teen characters, including a musician, a nerd, a randy couple, and so on; a curse on land held sacred by indigenous people, which was subsequently developed by white people; an onslaught of violent death for those teens, living on that developed land; black magic, an even darker local history, capitalist greed, and so on. 'Kadaicha' is very upfront about all of this, and the formula is so intact that, not necessarily through any fault of this title, there are no thrills or surprises to be had - unless, perhaps, you've never seen any similar title before, which would be impressive indeed. By all means, this 1988 flick is still enjoyable in and of itself for those who appreciate genre fare for more than just the visceral reactions they may inspire - just don't go expecting a revelation.

This may not be breaking any ground, but it's still well made. The cast give earnest, commendable performances, and I find no faults in the writing that imparts a complete, duly compelling story, with some welcome little details. There's a nice bit of variety in the death scenes, and all the stunts, practical effects, and special makeup look terrific. Bolstered by Peter Westheimer's music, the picture is even able to manifest a measure of uneasy atmosphere, and a couple scenes are especially striking (such as Gail in the bathroom). The filming locations are fantastic, and the art direction is nice; between James Bogle's direction and Stephen F. Windon's cinematography, 'Kadaicha' is shot well. Really, this is well made all around, and even as the tale walks a familiar path there are no especial flaws here - save, perhaps, for that the one thing that the feature can't do is achieve a spark of vitality to make any of the course of events strike a major chord. It's fun, but kind of flat.

Very simply, what it comes down to is that for anyone who has spent any amount of time exploring the horror genre, we've seen this film before. It's still a suitably good time, but there's no reason to go out of our way for it, and it's best left as something fairly light for a lazy day. I admire the work that all involved put into it, and I'm glad I watched it; I just don't anticipate ever feeling the need to do so again, and I wish this carried itself with more vibrant energy. Ah well. Not every flick needs to be a revelation, and this is decent enough as it is.

Plot: Residents living on land built on an ancient burial ground die after finding strange stones.

Kadaicha started off looking very promising but as time went on, didn't seem to go anywhere at all. It started to meander too much and take too long to reach the conclusion. The acting was very good for this type of movie (compared to most low budget horror flicks), but the deaths weren't very gory and the ending was rather dull.

Overall I feel this film could have been much more interesting as the storyline itself was quite good. Sadly it's just too boring - I wouldn't recommend seeking this out unless you're a collector.

4/10