The Dustwalker

The Dustwalker is a basic budget alien thriller from down under. Its limited funding shows from the get go but its not a bad little film.

It has the benefit of a rather unique setting that's suitably isolated, a small Australian outback town that fits in well with the back story. Having actors who actually know how to act helps this film too.

The action such as it is, is a bit mixed. Its a little too slow for my liking and its budgetary restraints stop it from doing anything novel that would have lifted it.

I think with decent money this could have been a winner but as it stands its only "ok".

5/10 from me.

The poster is very cool. Too bad it has nothing to do with the movie. I don't know if I've seem a more poorly edited film. I realize the budget was low, but that has nothing to do with putting the scenes together in such a way that a story makes sense. Anytime something happens we either cut away in the middle or jump in after it's happened. There is no narrative here, just random scenes that tell us nothing about what is happening. Then with virtually no setup a completely new element randomly appears, but other than one initial reaction none of the characters seem the least bit curious how it relates or what they should be doing about it. If my assumption about the plot is correct there is an interesting story in here somewhere, but it's lost due to a weak understanding of story structure and the aforementioned poor editing.

It's not the worst movie I've seen by far. I couldn't tell the budget from this movie, but I could tell they spent much more money on special effects rather than directing or the actors. Terrible, overused sound effects. I did like the concept and idea with the monster, but they went down the wrong path with it if I'm honest. Not horrible but also not very good. Acting was fine but directing sucked, also some chase/action scenes had terrible camera direction. Also something minor but that really bugged me was how clear the radios were it was super unrealistic.

Not the worst I've seen, and that seems to be the best thing I can say about it. It's a low budget film, so I can deal with bad special FX's. But the acting was bad, and characters were unbelievable. The story itself wasn't too bad, with a better director it might have succeeded. A writer should not direct their own work, especially amatuers. It was very slow, all the way through. Not really worth a watch.

Okay watch at best, might watch again, but can't recommend.

This is an Australian movie, so its a whole new cast to me, and I only saw the thumbnail, so I was excited to see what a Dustwalker is....I'm still kind of wondering.

This is a "small town under threat" trope, but the seemed to have a vested interest in making sure in keeping the audience guessing. They accomplished this by sort of shifting goalposts though, so every time you think they've established something they're going to work with, we're on to the next stage of problems, and the previous stuff, while it mattered for where we're at in the story, isn't currently relevant anymore. It sort of gave me this continual feeling of disappointment throughout the movie, even though the action is ramping up.

Even the production value was pretty good, they clearly got the look they wanted for the effects, granted it was likely a small budget.

It's a great concept, and I actual enjoyed the structure of events, but the audience needs to see more of some parts, and a less of others. The writing just wasn't paced well enough for me, but I can't write it off as a bad movie entirely: hopefully other people like this more than I did.