The Dustwalker

Just watched a Hulu movie called Dustwalker I'm not entirely sure why. At first it was Lovecraftian psychological horror. (Look at the image art on the movie poster and dvd cover for reference to why I thought it'd be more Cthulhu-related.) Then the 10 minute mark hit and the plot got thrown out the window. Too many plot devices that were never explained and left unanswered for the duration. The first one was that town's only cell tower is down...which we find out because the tech pulls out his cell phone and calls A friend in town...who answers /on her cell phone/. This isn't even a spoiler since /NEVER COMES UP AGAIN/. Also, I HATED the ending. I'll spoil that below. Spoilers start here:: I have a few questions: 1. Why is the movie called Dustwalker? The creature never goes near the dust storm (which itself is a one-and-done plot device that never gets explained. The thing goes underground as it's primary mode of transportation. 2. How the hell does the ALIEN speak and understand English within a couple hours after arriving on earth? 3. Can we talk about how the creature is half scorpion, half Resident Evil dog thing, but Is also a centaur? 4. The ending. Ugh. So. The entire movie is spent with survivors running from people gone murder-hobo who exist only to kill all humans and infect them with alien DNA or whatever. Then big bad comes along (the third of 4 times we see the creature), and takes all of the infected people, puts them in a pit and freaking /IMMOLATES THEM/ with its "now I'm a dragon-scorpion-demon-dog-thing" magical fire breath. That's it. The whole premise of the movie sucks so hard that the writer literally figured it'd be easier to just set it alight than try to fill in all of the plot holes.

If you're a fan of really campy, tropey bad films, go find one that doesn't suck and watch that instead. Overall, I give this movie a 2/10 stars, and that's just because I like psych horror (though this one down played the horror aspect.)

I've been around IMDB long enough to realize that some people just seem to love to leave crappy comments for movies. not every film can be the "worst" ever made. i mean, i'll leave "santa claus and the ice cream bunny" to fill that spot for me.

this film is slow and creepy. the acting is no better or worse than any other independent horror movie, but the story stuck with me after it was over. that's the sign of a good scary story, told well.

a small dying outback town has a visitor from far away, and the townspeople are being systematically taken over by a parasitic alien lifeform. we're just as in the dark as the unaffected residents who don't understand what's going on.

the scenery is gorgeous and it reminded me of another sci-fi story i read a long time ago, "stinger" by robert mccammon. another story of a desert community terrorized by aliens.

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.

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.

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.