The Couchpotatoes
Okay I must have missed something. I watched this movie purely based on the reviews it got, like "Best movie I ever saw" and so on... This movie is everything but the best movie I ever saw, it's garbage, and I really don't get how anybody could write a positive review about this. I give it two stars because there are actually even worse movies, but it came close to be in my absolute worse movies I ever saw list. There is almost no story, at least no interesting story. You can't even spoil the movie because there is nothing to say about it. The acting is sometimes terrible. All they do is drinking, gambling and talk nonsense. The worst part is the murdering of kangaroos, it's just awful to watch. I don't know why you would put that in a movie. Probably to shock people but in my mind you must be a sick person to like watching stuff like that. I thought it looked all real and I was right because in the end credits they openly admit it was real footage of a kangaroo massacre. So to me the moviemakers are sick bastards and all the people that like this movie as well. Enjoy your cruel disgusting life.
Fella_shibby
I first saw this in 2010 on a DVD. That time i was on a horror movie spree. I came across this title after watching Wolf creek. As a fan of movies based in Outbacks n Badlands n thinking of it being an outback horror i was excited bah this flick. Recently revisited this on a blu ray. The film is based on a 1961 novel of the same name by Kenneth Cook. Well, its not a true horror film but it is genuinely shocking, funny n weird at times. The movie is about a schoolteacher, who is not happy teaching in the middle of the desolate wilderness of the Outback. The opening scene shows beside a railroad track, jus two buildings,a school n a hotel. Both of em in the middle of nowhere. The cinematography is gorgeous, completely sun-soaked (i felt like just wearing a vest like the majority of the characters coz of the heat). The film feels claustrophobic and suffocating, even though the Outback is wide open. It is the end of the school year. The teacher is planning to head to Sydney for his vacation to meet his girlfriend. He lands in a town called The Yabba, an outback town populated by aggressively friendly weirdoes. The town is full of working-class population, primarily white males, outnumbering females, who all are happy drinking their beer in its own exclusive heat-haze bubble of dust and sand, sealed off from the rest of Australian civilisation by endless miles of desert outback emptiness. The teacher loses his money gambling in a weird game and constantly bumps into hard-drinking, hard-living, crude, vicious men. He descends into drunkenness, brutality, rape and a gruesome moonlight hunt where they massacre kangaroos (possibly the most disturbing five minutes). It's hard to watch, but only because it demonstrates the realistic results of human nature. We hav Donald Pleasance playin a doc once again. He is the backbone of this film, a true weirdo. Awesome acting.
Kim Ryberg
This movie is absolutely incredible. The constant sense of dread is palpable, from its opening sequence depicting the desolation and dust of the Outback to the ominous train ride to the nightmare that is the Yabba at night. Truly a masterpiece of cinematography and storytelling, and the most real "horror" movie that you will ever see. If you've ever been to the outback, the desolation seems to press in you from all sides, because as Jock claims "there's nowhere else to go." Through showing John Grant's slow slide into depravity and terror, the director highlights the brutality in human nature and the price of various different vices. You can sense John turning from an intelligent, sensitive man into a careless brute, all the while fueled by enormous amounts of alcohol and peer pressure. Some of the most moving scenes put onto camera. For the animal lovers, yes, the kangaroo scene is brutal, yes, real kangaroos died, but the POINT of their death is to showcase the glee with which these men ruthlessly kill these animals. A descent into hell on Earth that leaves you spellbound and terrified. 10/10, a must see!
Jennifer Lynx
Being relatively new to world cinema, I find that I often buy films blind, that is with little or no knowledge of the movie prior to my purchase. Such was the case with "Wake in Fright", an Australian film directed by Ted Kotcheff. I bought it solely on the description that it was "one of the seminal" films of modern Australian cinema, alongside "Mad Max" and "Walkabout". I was not disappointed.Gary Bond plays a newly minted schoolteacher, John Grant, sent to the outback to take over a tiny one room schoolhouse in the middle of nowhere. It is the last day of the term and school has just let out for the Christmas and New Year break, six weeks of Summer vacation, which Grant plans to spend with his girl back home in Sydney. He hops a train home, but has an overnight layover in Bundanyabba, aka The 'Yabba. One day turns into two and more as Grant falls into an almost Twilight Zone nightmare of drinking and gambling and losing all control. What he discovers along the way will have a lasting impact, to say the least."Wake in Fright" is a brutal watch. It is cruel, and graphic, and lays bare our civilized trappings. I quite liked it. This was a blind buy success. A beautiful, yet difficult, film, with a camera eye view of a culture in one time and place.
AD
