Dying Breed

Dying Breed is a waste. It is very very little about Tasmanian Tigers and more of a redo of some other horror movies.

Nothing new or different. Same old blood soaked chopping and slashing and women chasing.

Tired story line. Young people lost in woods find weirdos who eat people. Seen it before many times. BORING.

How to make a better movie. Drop the dumb dialogue, drop the dumb story line, get people who can act, they are called actors, less splash and more suspense, go back to telling an engaging story, and stop trying to be shocking. In fact, a good and well written movie would be shocking. Dying Breed sure was not anything worth seeing. The best part of dying breed were the few moments of the old (1930s) film clips of the Tasmaian Tiger

Australia is a beautiful country, the people and the land, however it has a dark history and 'Dying breed' is a small piece of that nostalgic pie. Two couples head into the Tasmanian wilderness in search of the extinct Tasmanian tiger and soon find themselves in unforgiving country populated by unforgiving locals. The direction and acting is steady with no real stand out performance and the characters seem a bit flat at times but the shots of Tasmania's isolated country side are fantastic and set a haunting tale. This formula has been applied countless times so there's nothing new here but its done well serving up some good blood and guts and proves along with Wolf creek that Aussie film can do horror. If your Austalian make it tradition to go see Australian films!

Just saw Jody Dwyer's Dying Breed. What an excellent Australian Horror flick it is! It could well be one of my favourite Australian Films of the year.

Four young cryptozoologists go to check out Western Tasmania in search of ye ol' Tasmanian Tiger. Little do they know they are stumbling upon the ancestors of Alexander Pearce, the famous Australian ex-convict, bush ranger and sometime cannibal known as the 'Pieman'. Suffice to say fine dining is loosed on the Pieman River as a group of Deliverance style in bred Tassie freaks hunt down our hapless Tiger hunters. Dying Breed is well cast with Leigh Whannell (Saw) giving us a great version of the metro-sexual out of his league in the wilds of Western Tasmania and Nathan Phillips (Wolf Creek) as a roustabout larrikin hunter. Whannel is an excellent leading man and should branch out from horror and do other serious work. The two girls Sally MacDonald and Melanie Vallejo are good too. Especially the later, when she is strung up and dismembered Cannibal Holocaust style out the back of the Pieman's shed. I'm sure Leigh Whannell must have been showing the director Cannibal Holocaust, as this scene certainly bears the imprint of that classic film and the Dying Breed scene is very well done in its brutality. The film has various very effective set pieces in a cave, at night in the bush, out the back of the killer's shed, on a bridge at dawn, etc. All shot effectively and scored very nicely. The ominous Tasmanian landscape evokes a darkness akin to what DH Lawrence said about the great primordial emptiness of the Australian bush. The film should travel well as the Aussie accents aren't too harsh, and one is a Irish accent. The family of inbred freaks are memorable and varied in their motivations and actions.

Dying Breed is a great edgy genre piece that is one of the first to appear in the new wave of horror cannibal films, so its ahead of the game world wide, also. I would have to rate it right up there with Rogue from last year and Acolytes, Horseman and Rats and Cats.

Why did they not enter it in MUFF? It would have won some awards! Check out the posters. I like the stylish one, while the second one with a gory pie will entice the teen market.

Stylish new Ozploitation is on display, that gives hope to the future of the Australian Film Industry!

I just got back from seeing Dying Breed and it was quite a mixed bag.

It took at least 50 minutes for the main action to begin. The first act got repetitive, dull and boring quickly as our four main characters seemed to do nothing and just chat. Don't get me wrong, I love character development, but they could have taken about ten minutes off the first act. There were many pointless scenes.

The other bad factor was the acting. Leigh Whannel sadly gave a poor performance, as well as all the other members in the group of four.

Onto the good, the gore was excellent and the film had that raw and gritty feel to it. Some scenes were creepy and disturbing. Also, the ending was very good and a fitting climax to the film.

Overall, this is an above average Aussie horror with many flaws and clichés, but still manages to entertain. A very generous 7/10.

Searching the Australian outback, a group of friends out looking for a legendary animal instead stumble upon a group of deranged cannibals selling their victim's unused body parts and try to avoid becoming part of their spree.

This was a pretty troubling and overall mixed affair. Among the numerous big flaws here is the fact that barely anything at all really happens in this one which draws the viewer in, where the majority of time here doesn't come off as enjoyable. A lot of this here is due to the group were forced to spend all the time with, who are an utterly annoying group that are completely unlikable that really wouldn't be friend as the wild, out-of-control jerk really shouldn't be with them as he would've prove tall that trust worthy in real-life. Acting like the stereotypical he-man macho jerk that has to be the leader of everything, bosses and beats-down everyone into seeing things his way and is such a general pain that he really wears himself out rapidly. That also plays a huge part of the film's first half pacing problems as not only is spending time here excruciating but their other antics are even less so, wandering through the endless miles of forest in their jeep or staying at the motel with the locals don't really have any really enjoyable sections. It's all filled with really uninteresting moments that simply drag this along, at a really slow pace due to these parts. There's also the rather troubling part here that all this manages to hold off the actual attacks until so late in the film that there's barely anytime here where the family actually goes about attacking them which causes the film some really troubled times here as there's so little time here spent with the main purpose of the film being them being stalked yet that can't happen with the film set-up the way it is. Even more troubling here is that the motivation for it all is yet another cliché of the inbred psychos looking for purity outside the clan which isn't all that original or unique and takes a lot of fear out of the family. These big flaws are damaging enough that the few positives here aren't enough to really make a dent, although they are noticeable. The film's biggest plus here is the rather fun and charged second half, where after they get past the dangers with the family and finally realize they're being chased as there's some really chilling work in the atmospheric forest as the first encounter by the cave where they encounter the cannibal patriarch who begins munching on the victim in the bushes the guide hikes them out through the forest into the dark, trap-filled mine and then the great encounter on the other side of the mountain. From finding the mutilated body of the guide alongside the remains of their friend and then encounter the shack in the woods where they have the gnawed bodies and skeletal pieces left behind there which sets up the truly chilling chase and eventual confrontation on the bridge which gives this some really fun times here. The only other enjoyable art here is the film's blood and gore, which not only come from the opening attack on the original member but the few small, bloody attacks here. These here make this enjoyable enough, but the flaws are just too detrimental.

Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Brief Nudity, sexual content, a rape scene and graphic violence against animals.