Simple Simon met the pie man playing with a knife
Main Cast: Mirrah Foulkes, Leigh Whannel
Director: Jody Dwyer
Each year there are movies produced that are never seen by the public. Their content is considered too graphic, too disturbing, too shocking for general audiences. This is one of those films.
Eight years ago, Nina’s sister Ruth turned up dead in the small Tasmanian town of Sarah, drowned in the river. Now Nina (Mirrah Foulkes) has decided to return to Sarah and continue her sister’s work, searching for the mysterious and elusive Tasmanian Tiger, a creature scientists aren’t even sure exists.
With the help of her boyfriend Matt (Leigh Whannel), and Matt’s friend Jack (Nathan Phillips) [and with Jack’s girlfriend Rebecca (Melanie Vallejo) tagging along], they travel to Sarah and begin their search. But Sarah has a checkered past, once serving as the hideout for escaped convict Alexander Pearce, AKA The Pieman. In the century-plus since, Sarah has grown around The Pieman’s legend and life and, as The Pieman was a cannibal, so are the people of Sarah, a small community in search of fresh stock.
Yeah, it’s an old, tired story. Horror is teeming with stories like this, a group of city folk wind up in the backwoods and run afoul of the local cannibals. The only thing that sets DYING BREED apart from the likes of WRONG TURN is location and the fact this movie is built off historical fact—Pearce was a real man.
I’d love to see something more original, but I guess it wasn’t meant to be. The plot unfolds by the numbers as the group is killed off in gruesome fashion one by one and it’s not just one monster in the woods after them, but the community itself, until the one with the conscience decides to step in. Of course.
The acting is decent enough, considering the characters are all as cliché as the story. Nina’s the straight-nosed serious one, Matt is the tagalong boyfriend who’s not really comfortable in the outdoors but wants to help his girlfriend. Jack and Matt are childhood friends, but Jack is, of course, a more wild personality than Matt, almost the complete opposite in fact, loud, brash, and impulsive. Rebecca is the obvious red-shirt from the beginning, so it’s NO surprise she bites it first. The actors play their roles pretty well, but no one brings anything special to the table. There’s no real depth to the stereotypes here.
Overall, DYING BREED is a good movie to watch, it’s easy on the eyes, not too overdone for the horror crowd. The score doesn’t overpower you and the editing is downplayed and casual, moving the story along without all the trappings of Whannel’s earlier horror movie, SAW.
I think it’s probably safe to chalk up the horror by numbers plot to inexperience on the part of the writers. Rod Morris, Michael Boughen, and director Jody Dwyer hadn’t written a horror movie before, and the first time out of the gate, it’s so easy to fall back on all the things you’ve already seen. This movie is tagged by one of the filmmakers as “DELIVERANCE meets THE HILLS HAVE EYES”, and while that’s exactly what it is. . . well, that’s ALL it is, in the end.
DYING BREED is pleasing to the horror lover’s eye but simply doesn’t bring anything new with it. I wouldn’t mind seeing another movie from the same team, only this time with more thought and originality mixed in, give me something smarter, less predictable—because DYING BREED is all kinds of predictable. From the opening scenes, you can pretty much map out what happens next in your head, and chances are high you’ll be right. This one wasn’t difficult to figure out. I’d watch it again, sure, it’s just not something I’m going to rave about because it’s just not special. DYING BREED is good, but typical.
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C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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