Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Maleeha Vincent It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

moviescrote Somehow I was under the illusion that Prey was in some way based on an aboriginal legend... Funnily enough not one aboriginal person was to be seen throughout the whole film. It was by far the worst Australian made film I have ever seen. Not one redeemable feature to be seen and the CGI snakes just topped it all off. Audio quality was slightly better than a cassette recording from the early 80's, which was most helpful in muffling the atrocious dialogue that plagued this drivel from start to finish. Characters were the kind of stereotypes that give stereotyping a bad name, and the only soundtrack that could be mustered was the occasional Rogue Trader's track obviously donated by the hapless lead NatBass. For a budget of $4m++ the producers would have been better off putting the cash into an ING account and at least getting the interest on it - not to mention saving all concerned the embarrassment of having their name to the film. I can only assume that some of the positive posts on this site regarding Prey are the contrived efforts of those responsible for this diabolical abortion of a motion (as in bowel motion) picture. Avoid like syphilis.

lost-in-limbo Not good. Not good at all. "Prey" is a very low-budget independent Australian supernatural horror feature set in the devastatingly ominous outback involving a group of young adults on a 4WD road-trip to a secluded beach, but get side-track when they take a detour to find a water-hole and end up encountering a centuries old Aboriginal curse known as Kadaicha. The bizarre concept had something there to work upon and there are some odd developments (like its hip opening introducing its characters and a sensual lesbian undercurrent), but in the end it's poorly conceived, embarrassing and lousily executed to simply make it banally camped-up, jumbled b-grade hokum. Outside of the expressively edgy location photography and "What the… ending involving the survivors smacking lips", not much works or remains interesting. Aside from some neatly realised imagery, when it came to the shoddy special effects is risibly done (sometimes the deaths happening off-screen or out of shot) and the cheapness of that made the atmospherics weakly orchestrated. The pumped-up direction went hand-to-hand with its brisk editing like something from a music video clip in probably trying to cover its low-scale image. There's nothing horrific about it, as the daftly plotted story seems to get worse as it mopes along with its laughably inconsistent developments and misguided timing. When the terrible script comes to the conclusion to why all of this weird stuff is happening to these people, it's mindlessly goofy and unfulfilled with a trashy ending. Not to mention quite dull, as it heads really nowhere when they go four-wheel driving. Not helping was the clunky rock / metal soundtrack inclusions that felt out of place in certain scenes and destroys any ability of cementing a suspenseful mood. The performances don't fair any better, either being leaden or overdone with their stereotypical characters. Jesse Johnson (that's Don's son) and actresses turned singer now actress again Natalie Bassingthwaighte take the lead and would be the only recognizable names to sweat it out. Well more for being Don's son for Jesse (as what else has he done) and Bassingthwaighte would have an Australian following. Again the story is supposedly inspired by certain true events, which I never even heard about. The film might get it fans, but I'm not one.

alan rondal Yep, my title says it all and its what i said to a mate when i was watching it. You don't understand how bad this movie is until you watch it. its like a monkey found a football and said i can banging that. He's trying, he's getting the idea but as he goes he keeps falling off and jumping right back on not releasing that everyone watching is in tears of laughter. ah...poor monkey. This movie is the monkey. There are blatant attempts to make this international product by making 2 of the leads American. but their accents are so bad that the dog down the street started to howl in pain, i'm serious. but how's this for editing: 2 cars, 2 cars, 2 cars, 3 CARS, 2 cars, 2 cars. Yep the editor is numerically dyslexic(if thats not spelled right i don't care because the film maker sure as hell didn't) I didn't want my money back though, i never do, because i think of these movies as a cathartic experience. I do want people to know that we do make good movies in Australia, its just that our genre stuff isn't quite hitting the mark right now.

robodog-5 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!