Long Weekend

2008
Dir. Jamie Blanks

Suburban couple Peter and Carla (Jim Caviezel and Claudia Karvan) take a weekend vacation in the hopes of repairing their crumbling relationship. The couple show an absolute lack of respect for their surroundings and amongst other things, drop litter, constantly spray insecticides, accidently kill a baby dugong, bicker with each other and are generally unable to conceal their utter contempt for one another. As the tension between the two escalates, nature itself seems to strike back against them. Is something supernatural afoot, or is the squabbling, insular couple losing their grip on reality?

Australian horror movies have been making quite an impact on the horror genre recently, though the country has a history of genre movies including classics such as Mad Max, Razorback and Picnic at Hanging Rock. More recently with films such as Wolf Creek, Rogue, Lake Mungo and Undead, filmmakers have begun to explore the darker recesses of the outback once more. The original Long Weekend was an eco-horror crossed with a distressing domestic drama in which an estranged couple attempt to salvage their marriage by escaping into the bush to get away from it all and rekindle old feelings. What they get though is far worse than either of them could have imagined, as the very landscape seems to conspire against them…

Director Jamie Blanks – no stranger to horror having already helmed Aussie shocker Storm Warning and the old-school slasher flicks Urban Legend and Valentine – has teamed up with the writer of the original screenplay to revisit a story that is still as relevant as ever in its concern for the destruction mankind wrecks upon the environment. From the outset, Blanks conveys a sense of just how vast and isolated the Australian outback is. Lush cinematography effortlessly captures the beauty – and potential danger – inherent in the vast expanse of untamed lands untouched by civilisation. The eerie otherworldliness of the outback at times seems to evoke an atmosphere simply dripping with an unnameable dread and awe. The scenes at night fully utilise the weird noises and sounds that come from the surrounding bush – the results are often immensely creepy. Stunning wildlife photography captures all manner of weird and wonderful beasts that potentially harbour all kinds of threats to man.

Not a lot of ‘action’ occurs in the film – but Blanks keeps things suspenseful by creating a strangely menacing and creepy atmosphere that constantly suggests something bad is going to happen. Events are a little predictable, especially as they rush towards the inevitable climax – which is signposted obviously enough – but the ambiguity and the two central performances should keep viewers on their toes.

The couple themselves deliver fine performances, though their constant squabbling and picking at each other ensures we can never really fully side with them. Both are selfish and unsympathetic – though at times it seems they weren’t always this way as a couple of isolated intimate moments are shared. They have lost their way – both figuratively and literally. At various stages throughout the plot both characters seem to have become locked in a sort of existential loophole in which they become lost and appear to be going in circles, passing the same landmarks and situations again and again. They have become locked into the bitter cycle that their relationship has become, and the contempt they project onto one another and the landscape around them is soon thrown right back at them.

A particularly tense scene features Peter going for a swim off the deserted beach. The camera follows him quite closely and at times all we can see is what he sees - water. Lots of water – and fuck knows what is gliding around under the surface… Wider shots give us the undeniable impression of his insignificance in relation to the ocean – he is but a speck. Carla, walking on the beach, notices a large dark shape under the water rapidly advancing towards him, and as she tries to alert him, things become very taut indeed…

The couple’s obvious contempt for each other could be manifesting itself in paranoia, together with the new strange and potentially hostile surroundings they find themselves in. Are the couple projecting their anger and fear and paranoia into their surrounding space? Or is nature actually turning against them? The frenzied bird attack and the vengeful adult dugong – seemingly dead though still moving up the beach towards their camp when no one is watching – provide particularly memorable moments. As does Peter’s discovery of a family campervan and the fate of its inhabitants… Chilling stuff.

Long Weekend won’t be for everyone, although viewers with an open mind and a penchant for slow-burning, suggestive psychological horror will find much to enjoy. Blanks’ remake was interesting enough to make me very keen to check out the original.

The two disc LONG WEEKEND (cert. 15) will be released on DVD (£17.99) by Showbox Entertainment on 8th February 2010. Special Features include: Director’s Production Diary; Interview Gallery (Claudia Karvan; Everett De Roche; Tobey Eggleston); Deleted Scene (Jim and the Ducks); ‘Making of’ featurette; ‘Taming the Wild’ featurette; Peter’s Death – Behind the Scenes with Grant Page and Roger Ward; English 2.0 and 5.1 audio options; chapter selection; trailer.