Seriously, if I hadn't read the description of "There's Something In the Pilliga" I would have had no idea what I was supposed to be watching. It took a long time to become the monster movie it promised to be and even then I was second guessing what was going on. But, it's available as part of Prime, so if you subscribe, now is the time to give it a chance.
In a sense of fairness, I'll say that if I hadn't started watching this with the intent to give it a review (The Movie only has two external reviews on IMDB so far and I feel all movies deserve some coverage) I would have stopped shortly after I realized it was going to be a "found footage" movie. I'm not a fan of the subgenre and I think the method has become overused in horror. So, no matter how well that element of the movie may have been done (and some shots were pretty good), the movie was already fighting an uphill battle to keep my attention through no fault of script, acting or f/x. Some of that would come later though.
The driving character through much of the movie is Jay and he is annoying as hell. I wouldn't want to spend an hour with him in a truck, but thanks to the first person style of the movie, I feel as if I did. While I found this grating, this is actually indicative of two things:
1. The POV shots did draw me into the action.
2. Brendan Byrne did an excellent job of playing an annoying son of a bitch.
In reality all of the acting in the movie was pretty spot on. I had trouble understanding the dialogue, but 90% of the time that was due to accents and my inability to parse them vs 10% of the time when it was the production being a bit too realistic as to the "found footage" quality of the audio. Most of the audio is pretty clean, but the truck occasionally drowned out some lines and people at a distance from the camera were heard to be talking as if they were far away. You don't notice it in most movies, but distance often isn't a true factor in how well you can hear someone in a film.
The movie takes a good 40 minutes or so before anything even remotely interesting happens unless you count some "peeping Tom" moments early on. I suppose this is story and character building time, but like I said, I found the main lead character annoying, so I could have done with less time developing that. Getting to the monsters and the danger in the woods takes even longer. We're treated to some sound F/X and glimpses of shadows and scary eyes, but not much else even though our first person camera operator is shining a spotlight all over the darkness of the nighttime woods. By this point of the film, unless you're interested in overexposed trees or underexposed monsters, there isn't much to see. There's an attempt at some exposition by a character who is hiding. Dylan, our camera operator, reminds us all when he ran across her earlier on because it's been so long that we're not likely to recognize her connection to the movie otherwise.
Honestly, I lost track of what was going on, but again, this could have been due to my lack of commitment to trying to follow "found footage" movies. I do tend to zone out.
In conclusion, if found footage movies are something you like, you'll find most of the elements you expect here. Also, a few scares at the end. Very, very solid acting with few relatable characters and not much to see F/X wise. Oh, and a baby animal make a brief appearance in a bar scene early on that was pretty cute. This one is more for found footage fans than monster fans and Americans will probably find the closed captions useful if dialogue and plot are important to you. There's certainly a lot of dialogue.
In a sense of fairness, I'll say that if I hadn't started watching this with the intent to give it a review (The Movie only has two external reviews on IMDB so far and I feel all movies deserve some coverage) I would have stopped shortly after I realized it was going to be a "found footage" movie. I'm not a fan of the subgenre and I think the method has become overused in horror. So, no matter how well that element of the movie may have been done (and some shots were pretty good), the movie was already fighting an uphill battle to keep my attention through no fault of script, acting or f/x. Some of that would come later though.
The driving character through much of the movie is Jay and he is annoying as hell. I wouldn't want to spend an hour with him in a truck, but thanks to the first person style of the movie, I feel as if I did. While I found this grating, this is actually indicative of two things:
1. The POV shots did draw me into the action.
2. Brendan Byrne did an excellent job of playing an annoying son of a bitch.
In reality all of the acting in the movie was pretty spot on. I had trouble understanding the dialogue, but 90% of the time that was due to accents and my inability to parse them vs 10% of the time when it was the production being a bit too realistic as to the "found footage" quality of the audio. Most of the audio is pretty clean, but the truck occasionally drowned out some lines and people at a distance from the camera were heard to be talking as if they were far away. You don't notice it in most movies, but distance often isn't a true factor in how well you can hear someone in a film.
The movie takes a good 40 minutes or so before anything even remotely interesting happens unless you count some "peeping Tom" moments early on. I suppose this is story and character building time, but like I said, I found the main lead character annoying, so I could have done with less time developing that. Getting to the monsters and the danger in the woods takes even longer. We're treated to some sound F/X and glimpses of shadows and scary eyes, but not much else even though our first person camera operator is shining a spotlight all over the darkness of the nighttime woods. By this point of the film, unless you're interested in overexposed trees or underexposed monsters, there isn't much to see. There's an attempt at some exposition by a character who is hiding. Dylan, our camera operator, reminds us all when he ran across her earlier on because it's been so long that we're not likely to recognize her connection to the movie otherwise.
Honestly, I lost track of what was going on, but again, this could have been due to my lack of commitment to trying to follow "found footage" movies. I do tend to zone out.
In conclusion, if found footage movies are something you like, you'll find most of the elements you expect here. Also, a few scares at the end. Very, very solid acting with few relatable characters and not much to see F/X wise. Oh, and a baby animal make a brief appearance in a bar scene early on that was pretty cute. This one is more for found footage fans than monster fans and Americans will probably find the closed captions useful if dialogue and plot are important to you. There's certainly a lot of dialogue.
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