The Movie:

Australia has been a minor hot bed of horror movies over the last couple of years and one of the more recent efforts from the land down under is 2008's Dying Breed from director/co-writer Jody Dwyer.

The film begins in the continent's colonial days, when it was still used as a penal colony by the English. We learn of the exploits of a dude nicknamed The Pieman who, rather than allow himself to be captured, turned to cannibalism. Cut to the present day and an Irish science student named Nina (Mirrah Foulkes) is trying to finish what her older sister started eight years ago, and that's to track down and prove the existence of a supposedly extinct tiger rumored to have been seen in the remote town of Sarah, Australia. Her sister was off in the bush for a while trying to find the beastie, but never succeeded, instead her drowned body turned up under rather mysterious circumstances, her work obviously unfinished.

Sarah and her boyfriend, Matt (Leigh Whannell) meet up with Matt's old pal, an Australian macho jerk named Jack (Nathan Phillips) and his sweet, curvy girlfriend Rebecca (Melanie Vallejo) and off the four of them go into the brush to find the critter. They stop in lovely downtown Sarah for a room and a meal but after an altercation with the locals, who seem to like to watch Jack and Rebecca get it on, they cut that short and head off into the woods to make camp in a cave they happen to come across. As night falls and Sarah's quest comes close to a successful conclusion with the appearance of the critter she's after, things are looking good... until the locals decide to end things their way.

Despite a strong opening scene, the first half of Dying Breed is pretty dull. It's slow moving, not a whole lot happens, and Jack gets really irritating really quickly. The four central characters wander through a series of clichés and you start to wonder what the point of the whole thing is. Thankfully, about an hour into the picture, things definitely pick up and take a pretty hard right turn into goresville. Once our campers realize what they've gotten themselves into and start looking around, the filmmakers throw a couple of surprisingly nasty set pieces at us that definitely catch us of guard and carry some impact.

As far as the performances go, nobody here really stands out. Despite the slow start, the character development is pretty weak and despite some nice effort from the writers, you can't really invest too much in these four because you don't know them well enough to care about them. The gore and tension towards the end of the picture help this a bit and the cinematography and location shooting is very strong, doing a nice job of showing off the raw beauty of rural Australia. On a technical level the film is fine, making it all the more of a disappointment, really. There are moments here that stand out and that you will remember - it's just unfortunate that getting there is a dull journey and that the pay off for that journey isn't all that strong. The picture is worth a look for horror movie fans for the solid final half hour, but go into this one knowing that whatever thrills you get out of it will be of the cheap variety. There's no real substance here, just some decent gore effects and a couple of cool kill scenes.

The Video:

Dying Breed is presented in 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen so it fills up your widescreen set nicely and appears to be in its original aspect ratio to boot. The first thing you'll notice regarding the quality of this transfer is that the colors have been tweaked a bit for the entire duration, to give the film an 'extra gloomy' look. While I personally felt the filmmakers went a bit too far with this tactic and thought that a bit more color would have made the nastier parts more effective, this was obviously an intentional choice and it isn't a flaw in this well authored disc. The source material was obviously very clean as there aren't any problems with print damage, nor are there any obvious issues with mpeg compression artifacts. Some really mild edge enhancement pops up once or twice but if you're not looking for it, you're probably not going to notice it. Overall, the movie looks very good on DVD.

The Audio:

The English language Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound track sounds pretty decent and it comes with optional subtitles in English (in case you have trouble with the Aussie or Irish accents) and Spanish. Channel separation is good, even if it could have been a little more aggressive during some of the more intense scenes. Dialogue is clean and clear and the track is well balanced without any hiss or distortion rearing its ugly head. Bass response is good, though the lower end could have been a bit stronger. Generally the audio here is pretty strong.

The Extras:

The only supplement worth bothering with on this release is Tiger By The Tail - The Making Of Dying Breed (16:21), a very clip heavy look at the making of the picture that features interviews with all of the principal cast members as well as with the filmmakers. There's a bit of behind the scenes footage here but most of the running time is made up of talking head interview bits and clips from the movie that we've already watched.

Aside from that, look for a trailer for the feature, trailers for a dozen or so other Lionsgate horror and action DVD/Blu-ray releases, a brief episode of the Ms. Horrorfest competition (a dull hour of moderately attractive goth chicks screaming, drinking wine, and goofing off), animated menus and chapter selection.

Overall:

Although it has a few moments that make it worth a watch for genre buffs, Dying Breed has also got a few obvious problems that keep it from working as well as it should. That said, some inspired gore and memorable moments of nastiness will stick with you - horror fans may just want to invest the ninety minutes and check it out. Rent it.

Ian lives in NYC with his wife where he writes for DVD Talk, runs Rock! Shock! Pop!. He likes NYC a lot, even if it is expensive and loud.