6 / 10
score
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Simple Simon met The Pieman playing with a knife.
Said Simple Simon to The Pieman “Will you take my life?”
 
Following on from Wolf Creek and Black Water, Dying Breed plays less on conventional fears (murderers in the outback and crocodiles in the mangroves) by having a group travel off the beaten track in Tasmania in search of the Tasmanian Tiger. 
 
The film opens with the true story of the Irish convict Alexander Pierce, known as The Pieman, who, in 1822, escaped from his British captors and had to turn to cannibalism to survive.  In the present day, Nina, a Zoologist whose sister went missing in Tasmania some years ago whilst looking for the tiger, travels ‘down under’ to find out what happened to her and find proof of the creature’s existence.
 

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With her boyfriend Matt, she hooks up with local lad Jack, an outgoing and egotistical Aussie and his girlfriend Rebecca and they travel to a colonial era village, making it their base for their trips into the surrounding forest.  The tone is set early when Matt sees a young girl on the punt playing with teeth and singing a sinister song, when he approaches the girl she bites him.
 
The local bar is hardly welcoming and Matt tells Jack to shut up when he begins humming ‘Duelling Banjos’ but they manage to secure accommodation for the night before heading up river on their boat the next day.  Jack manages to annoy the locals by slashing the tyre of a ute that cut them off on the way and you know immediately that this isn’t going to be a trip where everyone will come back unscathed.
 
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Dying Breed marks Jody Dwyer’s debut feature and he brings recognisable genre actors Leigh Whannell (writer and star of Saw) and Nathan Phillips (Ben from Wolf Creek) to the project.  The film is an ordeal horror with the group defending themselves against Pierce’s descendants, though they are unaware of the history of the area.
 
Dwyer shows himself to be a competent director, using the location superbly to create real tension and horror.  The cast are very good in their roles, with a mix of empathy and annoyance, with Nathan Phillips suitably irritating – you don’t want him to die but you feel that, in true genre fashion, he has to!  This is a very enjoyable and well crafted debut feature that marks Jody Dwyer out as a name worth looking out for and though Dying Breed isn’t the best horror film out of Australia in recent years, it’s well worth a look.
 

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