I Watch Films: The Long Weekend

 

The Long Weekend

A couple in Australia go on a trip for a long weekend (there’s a public holiday). They are arguing, and to begin with not about the issues that are really putting their relationship under strain. (The wife talks about going to a hotel, but they’ve got camping gear, including a rifle and are going to a lonely beach. In fact when they stop to ask for directions no one’s heard of it, though they have heard of the abattoir that’s the last turn off before it; they drive in circles in the dark after following a track that says No Entry. They also argue about the dog. In case this is a deal-breaker, the dogs are okay but a lot of other animals get hurt and killed.)

They start to enjoy, or at least tolerate the solitude, with sporadic arguments. However they randomly start causing damage, chopping a tree for no reason, destroying an eagles egg and killing birds. While her husband is surfing the wife spots a dark shape in the water; fearing a shark the husband shoots it. It’s a dugong, though he initially refers to it as a bunyip, a mythological creature. The apparently dead dugong keeps appearing in new places as the film becomes more threatening, the events stranger, and the couple’s argument comes into focus.

Watch This: For a glorious looking Australian bush man-versus-nature horror that is tense and horrid
Don’t Watch This: Some idiots cause even more damage to the ecosystem than they do to themselves