Red Billabong

This film is such a shame. It had everything going for it, decent production values, visually interesting and a unique idea. All of this gets turned into a missed opportunity by a poorly executed script full of cliques, casual misogyny and lazy dialogue.

The main problem is that main characters (the brother) are just boring. The film doesn't give you a single reason to like or care for them. They're not unlikable people but they're far from being interesting or emotionally engaging enough for you go on this journey with them. Nor are they cool or charismatic enough for you to live a power fantasy through them. On top of this, all the minor characters are totally interchangeable and forgettable (which the expectation of the goofy girl).

The main plot (until the monster plot takes over) is about the leads working out whether or not to sell their family farm. Something you don't really want for a film that's touting it self as as 'the biggest Australian action film of 2016'. I'm guessing they didn't catch the absurdly silly 'Gods of Egypt'.

You would think that this plot would just be a mcguffin so a family drama can unfold between the brothers but… nope. And this's the problem. Internally, you have no idea who the two leads or what they really want. Don't get me wrong, characters in these type of films needs to be too deep but they do need some dept. Even Max is the 'light on plot' 'Fury Road' had internal desires and motivations. I.e. testing if he could trust and connect with humans again. These characters are just uninspiring cliques who spurt plot points until the monster turns up.

The first two acts just have too many 'talking head' scenes that could have been edited right down. But in its defense, the third act is pretty good. It's where all the action, CG and set pieces are but by the time it came around, I'd I'd stopped caring.

To be honest, the film really didn't bother me too much. We've all seen bad films. What inspired the review was the Q&A after the film in which the director spend the entire time attempting to humble brag about how great he and his film is. He used every opportunity to mention that it was a "Good, fun action film" It's really not. It's a technically sound, bloated film with a bad script.

It also made it perfectly clear he's an 'independent filmmaker and not Hollywood". I think that was clear to everyone from all the actors from 'Home and Away'.

And he really going to leave his mark on the Australian film industry; not with scripts like this he isn't.

The film fails at it's aspirations of being a light and fun popcorn film. Everyone clearly has talent and were trying there best. It's not the worst thing I've ever seen, but there are so many other great Australian genre film you really should be watching before this.

Absolutely dumbfounded as to how this is getting anything higher than 3 - 3.5 stars

As one of the previous reviewers suggested, it does look like it was made by Uni students during their lunch break. There are a number of painful scenes where the actors really are unsure of what they're supposed to be doing or how they should be acting.

Also, with regards to CGI, if you don't have the budget to do it well, don't do it at all. It was laughable. We didn't really need to see as much as we did, it would have been better leaving more to the imagination.

Wooden acting at best with lackluster direction. The idea and potential could have been great with thorough execution but this just left us all feeling like we wanted 2 hours of our lives back.

The dog was great.

Funny thing with some of the other 10/10 reviews.... check the profiles, one gold coast actor (supporting his friends in the industry) the others all created recently and only reviewing this film ... I smell a rat! ;-)

This is a two hour movie about an Aboriginal monster in which nothing happens for more than an hour. Then everything comes crashing down, but without any sense or reason. Has no one read the script and realized that the guy from the beginning could have explained and solved everything before anything bad happened? Also there were so many details in the beginning of the movie that went nowhere. Honestly the first half of the movie could have been 15 minutes. I can confidently suggest you skip to 1:15 and watch the film from there.

The acting is pretty bad, too. You can immediately tell Felix Williamson is the only professional actor there. The others weren't terrible, but the entire film feels like a student experiment.

Being a low budget film I didn't expect much in the way of special effects and in that regard they did a decent job, except the fight at the end which was ridiculous.

Bottom line: I have no idea why I chose to watch this movie, but I can tell you it was a bad decision :) This film has almost nothing redeemable. And sorry about making fun of Jessica Green, she's really cute and was decent in Outpost, but she is just an extra here.

I'm upset about how bad this movie is. As an Australian I worry for Australian sci-fi. Much like Occupation (2018), that other awful Aussie sci-fi, the cgi and camerawork was good, but the story, and particularly the script, was unnatural and difficult to bear. Red Billabong may have worked if this were about a reunion of two estranged brothers (no unexplained horror). Or, Red Billabong may have worked if this were solely about two brothers, not estranged, battling an unexplained horror. I'm not kidding, the mish mash of two estranged brothers battling each other and an unexplained horror was just plain irritating. The theme may sound familiar, and others may argue that relationship colour alongside adversity is a common and highly popular theme. I'll grant that, but for me, it seemed that the script had been written by a 13 year old with no real experience of what he/she was writing about. I'm not kidding, there are unrealistic stereotypes, sexism, male bitchiness, horrible initial portraits of young women, loads of cliches, potty mouths throughout, and way too many attempted classic lines. It's awful. At a certain point about 50 mins in a young man with a beanie appears and converses casually with one of the brothers. This beanie guy has appeared from nowhere in the forest, and is not seen again, nor was he seen previously in the movie. I actually clicked on all the pics above to try and figure whom the hell he was! Awful and irritating. Please Australian film, please check your work better!

The idea that "just because an Aussie made it -- It MUST be supported" is rubbish -- this really feels like a university student film with a high school plot - the online PR is promoting that this is Australia's first CGI film... ummm ... so what?!?! Using CGI doesn't equal a good film. In fact the CGI is below average. Everything in this film is clichéd to the point of embarrassing. The story is predictable. The actors are soap calibre. The link to ancient culture is forced & ill-conceived. There is no horror. No thrill. Nothing new. This is naive film-making at it's worst. The whole exercise looks like a marketing survey aimed at the lowest common denominator.