When a Walkabout turns into a terrifying run...

I've always loved Australian films.  I find both the stories and the characters quite charming and quirky.  But aside from Picnic at Hanging Rock, I find the horror films of Australia to be, well....kind of savage.  And I mean that in a good way.  Perhaps it is the setting.  You know, the rugged, desolate Outback.  Picnic at Hanging Rock had a surreal quality to it.  I've always found it so interesting that the film was originally touted as, "based on true facts".  Then some years later, it came out that it was all a hoax.  To this day I'm still not sure what's true and what isn't.  For those of you who have not seen it, it is about a group of girls from a prominent girls school in Australia during the early part of the 20th century.  Some of the school girls go on a picnic (at Hanging Rock).  Four of them wander off to explore some caves and only one returns. The student that does return can't remember anything.  The three girls are never found.  Is it an actual crime or something more supernatural?  Years after watching the movie, I'm still trying to figure it out. 

      Dying Breed  &  The Uninhabited, are two other Australian-made movies that I enjoyed.  I didn't want to watch Dying Breed at first.  It's about a group of people that go deep into the Tasmanian jungle in search of a legendary Tasmanian tiger.  What they find is a group of cannibalistic mountain-folk set on devouring the men in the group and breeding with the women.  Again, this in not my usual pick for a horror movie because it doesn't involve anything supernatural and it does involve rape.  Fortunately, there really is not a lot of that in the movie, however it is heavily implied.  And the eating scenes are pretty graphic.  But I have to say that I was enthralled with it. The back story of the mountain-folk is interesting, too.  They are descended from a group of criminals who escaped one of the penal colonies so prevalent during 19th and early 20th century Australia. One of the convicts was particularly brutal and was the first to resort to eating his comrades.  This wasn't some "Donner Party" deal where he had to eat the dead in order to survive. He did it for pleasure.  And it was this "hunger for human flesh"-gene that got passed down through the generations to the mountain-folk in the present.   This movie was incredibly creepy and kept you hooked until the very end...the very TWISTED end.  The Uninhabited was a little more my speed...supernatural.  It is the story of a couple who are taken to a remote island for a weekend of togetherness and relaxation.  They are dropped off by a grizzled old fisherman who warns them that something is not right with the island.  They (of course) ignore his warnings and after he leaves, they proceed to make a camp- site for themselves and then frolic in the water. As the day falls into night, they begin to suspect that they are not alone and that somebody is playing a trick on them by moving their stuff around. The next day, while on walk through the woods, the girl finds a diary in an old fishing cabin. The diary belongs to a woman who lived there over 100 years before.  The girl begins to read the diary and discovers a shocking secret about the island.  She also now believes that the ghost of the woman is haunting the island. Soon, the couple find themselves dealing not only with the ghost, but two men who have come to the island with less than innocent intentions.  Again, this movie had an almost dream-like quality that a lot of Australian films have and I rather enjoyed it.  Without giving anything away, as I hate to do, all I'll say is beware of the poisonish fish!
On my list of more Australian horror films to watch are: Lake Mungo, Visitors and Wolf Creek.