Prey (2009)

Six obnoxious friends take a trip across the outback where they stumble across an ancient curse.The utter confusion of Outback's opening scene, which features bad CGI serpents and a naff green-eyed zombie, had me concerned, but I knew that I had picked a total stinker as soon as the film began to introduce its unlikeable central characters using that tired technique of freezing the frame on each person as they are doing something that typifies their personality, applying a distressed filter to the still, and then stamping their name next to them in a grungy typeface. The use of that particular uninspired editing gimmick always sets the alarm bells ringing…But that's just the start of what proves to be one of the most irritating, ill-conceived, poorly directed and generally unfathomable movies that it has ever been my misfortune to see. The novelty editing and directorial affectations continue unabated (split screen, grainy B&W filters etc.), director Oscar D'Roccster clearly under the impression that he's Tarantino, Guy Ritchie, or Robert Rodriguez, and the film only gets more bewildering as time passes, the true nature of the curse never being adequately explained.One-by-one, the horrible characters are bumped off by unknown forces, the lead girl (Natalie Bassingthwaighte) gets sweaty, bloody, takes a shower fully clothed and changes her sexual orientation (!?!?), and the optional extra of a chainsaw on one of the 4x4s comes in extremely handy.

This was the best thing about Christmas this year, being stuck in 200 feet of snow and ice in my relative's crummy house in Buffalo for the holidays. My cousin brought the DVD from Sydney, Australia and was going gaga over the lead actress. She didn't know the lead actor was an American, Miami Vice Don Johnson's son. I went into this expecting something like a low budget Aussie Donnie Darko meets Plan 9 from Outer Space and loved it! I don't understand some of the plot lines why these kids all knew each other, but who cares? Stick a bunch of hot looking guys and girls in some aboriginal sacred sight with a nutcase and a curse and chainsaws and aromatherapists and was a lot more enjoyable than Transformers 2 for my money! The music rocked (Ladytron!) and it was pretty funny and there were two pretty good scares though the girls were pretty freaked out most of the way through. The end credits and 'making of' were very funny and all in all the best 90 minutes of Christams 2009!I'm still not sure what exactly what we saw but we're gonna see it again with a living room full of beer!

I have never felt the urge to write a comment on IMDb before because i either like a film and vote or hate it enough to enjoy it and vote and leave it at that. Until i met Prey, that is. This is the most inept piece of film making to come out of Australia since the good old 80s 10ba system was throwing us some trash. there is nothing redeeming about this film and at 76 minutes it has overstayed its welcome by a good 20 minutes. The entire cast is Australian but for reasons never explained, of the 6 people 4 of them are Americans in Australia (you know they're not really because the accents are atrocious). This film, and i call it that loosely, was developed with Film Victoria. How? Why? I cannot comprehend. This is a movie that is begging for a bit of T & A but can't muster the courage to be the blatantly exploitative movie it needs to be. For gods sake you can even see people swearing when the rerecorded voice is trying to cover it up. This is a testament to Australian film-making at the moment. no courage, no balls and no talent. No matter how flawed they may be, indie produced no budget genre fare (like Gabriel, Undead and The Dark Lurking)are at least trying to be a hell of a lot more than the sum of their parts should be, and for the most part they are succeeding. No wonder all these guys are trying to get to the states, and good luck to them i say!

The draw card for this movie was that it starred Natalie Bassingthwaighte. The cover gave the impression that it was a b-grade Australian horror movie, which I must admit I am usually a fan of. The first blow was finding out that although all but one cast member was Australian, most of them wore pretty poor American accents. It was confusing for us at the start as we couldn't actually figure out if it was purposely bad or if perhaps we had misread the cover and it wasn't even set in Australia. Alas, it was simply that without explanation or reason the Australians were portraying Americans..in Australia? The fun of this movie is based on catching all the mistakes. At one point there are three cars driving along a desert track when there aren't actually enough people alive to drive them... The reactions to close friends and lovers deaths are generally rather perky. Apparently the death of loved ones is a usual occurrence in Australia and the holiday must go on. Who knew that happily coupled American/Australian girls were so inclined towards lesbianism during a time of crisis? The first time I see a back-from-the-dead friend with his face half burnt off (and still flaming), I now know that the appropriate reaction is to gaze lazily at him and casually speak his name as he picks me up and throws me into a pit of snakes.. The utter lack of realistic motivation to escape was fun to watch, I know that if I were just witness to multiple deaths in the desert I would definitely want to take a quick lesbian shower to wash off before escaping from a 'curse'. Speaking of the 'curse'... I don't believe it was actually mentioned that there was a curse, the 'making of' feature informed me that it was supposed to be an Aboriginal curse and that the Aboriginals who auditioned for the role of the 'bad guy' were actually offended by the material and declined to take the role, not surprisingly. I felt that the movie was not only offensive to Aboriginal culture, but to women, lesbians, Australians, Americans and the general movie watching public. I sure would like to know where dear old 'Kate' got her medical certifications...Kate has taught me that in an emergency crisis where there is a pyramid shaped object piercing through someones chest, the best way to stop the gushing blood is to try and pull the object through the chest from the skinniest end, making sure the fat end comes right through the chest...making the biggest hole possible.Fun, fun, fun! I actually ended up enjoying the complete absurdity of this movie! I will admit I was disappointed that the main characters couldn't just have their natural accents, but it was so fun every time they spoke out of their intended American accents to be like "that's sooo Aussie"Overall, a fun movie! The end