Charlie's Farm

I first watched Charlie's Farm not long after it came out on DVD and really enjoyed it. Roll on six years or so and I have just given it a second viewing, sadly this time it didn't have quite the same effect. Let's be honest any movie that has B-movie queen Tara Reid get top billing is never going to be great. Acting isn't her best asset and without sounding ageist I felt that she looked too old for her part as one of the "youths" looking for the farm of the title (she would have been late 30's at the time). This is an Australian slasher movie set in the bush and has some great scenery. Among the cast are two American titans of horror, Bill Moseley and Kane Hodder. Moseley plays Charlie's drunken, murderous father and puts in the best performance of the film, constantly referring to his son as "retard". Hodder, best know for playing Jason Vorhees, is a bit more out of place, he plays a boxing coach who adds very little to the story. Charlie himself is played by man mountain Nathan Jones. I do like Australian movies and the Aussie wit is very much here but overall the acting isn't great and, with a few exceptions, the first half of the film does plod. When the gore and brutal killings do come later on it was worth the wait. Some really gory kills and thankfully no horrible CGI. As a splatter movie it delivers but is low on nudity, just a single female breast and the rear view of a butt naked dude. To date there has been no sequel so for now at least it is a fairly reasonable stand alone title in the modern stalk and slash genre.

Just in case there still are some backpackers crazy enough to go out hiking in the Aussie Outback after "Wolf Creek" and "Wolf Creek 2", there is now "Charlie's Farm", which must be located somewhere West of Bundanyabba, where the people seemingly all turn psychopathic due to the heat and drought! "Charlie's Farm" is exactly what you expect it to be, namely an extremely brutal and visceral '80s throwback-slasher with an undefeatable killer, plenty of disposable victims and excruciatingly painful death sequences. Top of the bill, genre fanatics are treated with guest appearances of beloved horror icons Bill Moseley ("Texas Chainsaw Massacre II", "House of 1.000 Corpses") and Kane Hodder ("Hatchet", "Friday the 13th"). Horror geeks Jason and Mick mislead their girlfriends and plan a camping trip to the notorious murder site Charlie's Farm. The deranged Wilson family who used to own the farm were maniacal rapists, murders and cannibals. Farmer John and his wife eventually got murdered by an angry mob, but their mentally underdeveloped son Charlie fled into the woods and was never found. More than 30 years later, there naturally are many urban legends and campfire tales about Charlie going around, as well as stories about tourists who went out to farm and never returned. As you can see, "Charlie's Farm" literally hangs together from traditional slasher clichés, stereotypes and homages to genre classics. The film is a lot of fun, although admittedly it takes a little too long before hell fully breaks loose, and the ideal type of entertainment to watch in group with beer and pizza (or at a Film Festival after midnight, like I did). The gore and make-up effects are very professionally handled and the film definitely contains some of the nastiest murder scenes I've seen in a slasher since a long time. Just to give a few examples, there's a girl whose jaw is ripped off and another poor girl has her whole head squished underneath the wheel of a tractor. Ouch! After Glen Jacobs in "See No Evil", Nathan Jones is another wrestler to depict a crazed killer in a gory horror movie. I can easily understand writer/director Chris Sun's choice to cast Nathan Jones, considering his gigantic posture and menacing grimaces. "Charlie's Farm" represents purely rancid and shameless trashy horror entertainment from Down Under; nothing more and certainly nothing less.

As films go, this was a 5 but as horror films go, this was a 6. This really had everything you would want from a slasher flick: a menacing and monstrous baddie with a sad and weird backstory, a variety of kills and plenty of gore and creepy moments in eerie settings. This isn't one of the great Australian horror films but it is a dependably good one. It does everything you want it to. The build up is nicely paced and then it just kicks off and doesn't relent until it ends.

One of the things I really liked about this film was that it was a horror that wasn't filled with teens and tweens unlike a lot of films in the genre these days.

It was an enjoyable watch and a good way to fill the late night. If you like your horror films then I'd recommend this one to you.

You know, I'm awaiting something that can really show us, what this new and talented director can bring to the table. CF is a really well made film, and the first of Sun's to hit cinema. After almost scarring and scaring us with the overindulgence, and in one sense, brilliance of Daddy's little girl, CF is too much of what we've seen before in other horrors. There are some truly, repulsive and nasty moments in the early half, again with violence so overdone, it's laughable and unbelievable. The opening music score, and opening credit sequence was awesome, where even here, there are familiarities. The early part, where Charlie's cannibalistic parents, are killed by townsfolk in retribution for eating all of the missing employees, is very Texas Chainsaw Masssacre'st, chiefly as in the last TC, but the others in the resurrected franchise. Little Charlie of course survived and is believed to be possibly lurking around. You know how these urban legends and campfire tales ensue. You been to horror school. Now Charlie, a seven foot guy, built like a brick s..thouse wants revenge, and gets it. There wasn't much suspense here I found with this frightener pic, chiefly, because you could tell the moment, each victim, was gonna buy it, and where, especially one couple in a lake, where the male party, a real gross out guy, is deprived of his donkey d..k. I spotted their demise here a mile off. They're part of a foursome. Two hotties + one not bad looking guy, plus gross out guy, who has possibly scored with hottie Alina Jacques. Watching Tara Reid, yeah the main star? near the start, sunbathe in a black bra and bikini was arousing, and genuinely they're were some good performances, but the gross guy was very good. Another couple who we don't care much about, tag along later in the film, as if desperate attempt to add more suspense, gore, or duration. The grueling finale was quite intense which had me again, familiarizing myself with the nearing of the Friday 13th remake. On the whole, the film isn't badly shot, some scenes of our inner outback, wonderfully and beautifully captured, with some nice slow zoom in shots. Sun just has to now get serious and bring something of higher quality to the cinema screen. Charlie's Farm fails on the basis of not being original where we've been there too much, and seen too much of that before. Again I drawer heavy reference to the catalyst in the last TC.

The movie wasn't great by any means, but it was certainly watchable. The acting was pretty good for what the movie needed. However, after they're at the farm, two other people show up. I figured they were thrown in to be the first killed so the audience could have more time with the original four characters.

Charlie's backstory wasn't too bad. However, why did he have yellow eyes? lol. I can understand the crooked back, but the eye color was a bit silly.

Much of the movie happened as I thought it would, except for the end. I won't spoil it other than to say it was...not expected.

Tara Reid was pretty good in the movie, but she really does need to put on some weight. When she was crossing over the fence in the beginning of the film, it looked like she had no bicep muscle. She's a pretty girl and a fair actress, but she needs to take care of herself.

There is a bit of nudity in this. In Charlie's backstory, a woman is tied to a bed, and one of her breasts is visible. Later in the movie, Donkey is getting out of a lake, and his butt is shown.

The kills were...gross. So, if that's your thing when you watch this type of movie, you'll like this. I don't usually cringe about death scenes in horror films, but I did in this one. As I said, they were gross.

I gave this a 5-star rating. If you like horror films, and you're sick of the 1-star low-budgets that have awful actors/actresses, this will be a refreshing change. Mind you, it's not great, but it's good enough if you've got 90-minutes to blow.