This comes out on DVD on the 16th of January, if I remember right. It must be some cop, as it's a low budget Aussie film that's getting a pretty wide release (if only on DVD) and it's been getting some good reviews.
Now, it's about a group of backpackers in Oz who come across a murderous local (based on the Backpacker Murders of the early 90s). Now, I think this is the sort of film that would have once been labelled a video nasty, but I reckon some of these films are actually very good horror films. And let me tell you why. Yes, the smoking jacket and meerschaum are coming out now, so run.
Horror films aren't meant to be pleasant experiences. they're meant to scare us, at least. They may also horrify, disgust and upset us BUT isn't that the point? Those films with downbeat endings where everyone dies...aren't they more realistic, the more likely, compared to bullshit happy endings where after two hours of bloodshed and terror, life goes back to fucking normal?
How many of us would survive, put into similar situations in close proximity to monsters, disasters, serial killers? How many horror films depict such things, and yet one lucky person always escapes? If anyone survives, it can't have been that fucking dangerous in the first place! And don't even get me started on the fact that a lot of the survivors avoided the Reaper through sheer fucking luck. I mean, intelligence, knowledge, experience, skill, it all goes out the fucking window in most films.
And people surviving...that's not horrifying, is it? Whereas, everyone dying or even some surviving but scarred and crippled (mentally, emotionally, physically, whatever) IS because it forces us to know that we don't get away in the end, that the monsters get US, and if they miss we have to live with the knowledge that they only missed this time.
Sorry. Rant over.