All Rise...

Appellate Judge Patrick Bromley doesn't mind this kind of extended vacation.

Editor's Note

Our review of Long Weekend, published September 27th, 2005, is also available.

The Charge

Their crime was against nature—and nature found them guilty!

The Case

Viewing Colin Eggleston's 1978 animal horror movie Long Weekend, I was reminded of my first viewing of the great Wake in Fright—both are thrillers (of sorts) taking place in the Australian wilderness. Both are Australian productions made during the 1970s but going under the radar for many, many years. While their ultimate goals are different—Long Weekend is the more exploitation-minded of the two, though at least in a character-based way—both movies brought the same question immediately to mind: why haven't I seen this movie before?

John Hargreaves (Cry Freedom) and Briony Behets (The Saddle Club) star as a marries couple who take a trip to the woods for a weekend getaway. They bicker and they argue and they fight, all while disrespecting their environment by littering, polluting and just being generally careless and wasteful. Sooner than later, the wild has had enough and decides to punish the couple for their transgressions.

Movies like Long Weekend can have a difficult time connecting with audiences because it doesn't really offer any human characters with whom they can sympathize. Peter and Marcia begin the films as our surrogates, but before long reveal themselves to be terrible human beings. The arguing couple are the only people in the whole movie, and they're made unlikable not just by the way they treat their environment (for which they get their just desserts and then some, like an old EC Comics story) but by the way they treat one another. The result is that we spend most of the movie standing outside of it and observing at a distance instead of emotionally invested at the center. Doesn't make it wrong—this is the way Eggleston wanted to tell the story—but it's going to put some viewers off.

I, for one, really like the way the movie is structured. I've been seeing a lot of eco-horror films lately (Scream Factory just put out a whole bunch of them) and they all follow the same template, usually getting more and more outrageous as they go along. The Long Weekend doesn't. Eggleston makes the decision to stay grounded all the way through, never introducing killer moss or giant bugs that would really push this story into the uncanny. It's a bit like a feature-length Twilight Zone, only one that's as much informed by its location as it is its screenplay. While not as direct a commentary on Australian life as Wake in Fright, this feels like a movie that could only have been made by Aussies.

The decision to spend so much time with Peter and Marcia building up before the horror really starts is also interesting; roughly an hour of the 90-minute film goes by as just a domestic drama about a camping trip going wrong. The shift from their problems being their arguments with one another to their problems being that the forest is trying to kill them reminds us that a) we think we are the masters of our own universe, but that control is just an illusion and b) we think that our own problems are

Long Weekend (Blu-ray) from Synapse is a real thing of beauty. The 2.40:1/1080p HD transfer is almost totally pristine; colors are rich and fine detail stands out in every blade of grass and bead of sweat. There's no way this movie has ever looked better than it does here. Just as good is the lossless 5.1 audio track (a lossless stereo track is also included), turning your living room or home theater into the Australian outback with nuanced, immersive surround effects and clear dialogue. It's subtle, but incredibly effective. Anyone who struggles with the accents may want to take pause, as there are no subtitles included. Extra features consist of a commentary by producer Richard Brennan and director of photography Vincent Monton, a still gallery accompanied by narration by star Hargreaves and the original trailer.

Long Weekend is such a pleasant surprise—a movie with which I wasn't really familiar prior to seeing it but which deserves to be on the radar of way more people. Hopefully the wonderful job Synapse has done with the Blu-ray will help gain it a larger audience. This is a real gem of Australian cinema.

The Verdict

Not guilty.

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