After Dark Horror Fest 3: Dying Breed

Inbred hillbilly cannibals menace city folk.

Sure, we've seen it before. But have we seen it in Tasmania? I think not! (Joe Bob Briggs is going to sue me for stealing his shtick.)

Leigh Whannel is best known as the writer of the first three "Saw" movies and producer of the whole series. But before that, he was an actor, as he is here, in this rather by-the-numbers hillbilly horror flick.

Seems his movie-girlfriend is on the hunt for a rare Tasmanian beastie (which I believe they have found but don't disclose the location of in real life) and also for answers as to her sister's drowning eight years previous. He invites jerky buddy along for the trip and buddy brings along girlfriend, so that we have plenty of potential victims.

Before you know it, they've pulled up in a small "town" in out-of-cell-tower-range territory and are being menaced by the locals. Although the locals actually seemed pretty nice to me. Maybe it's just the Aussie accent.

Actually, tThe accents are somewhat Irish which is confusing to me since I didn't know if they were Aussies trying to do Irish accents or if some Aussies actually have Irish-ish accents.

Then they're 10 miles into the out--well, not the Outback because it's Tasmania, but whatever the Tasmanian equivalent is--and walking around trying not to fall into mineshafts.

The jerky guy--who's really very jerky--brandishes a crossbow, which upsets the lead, but I was thinking if it were me, everyone would have a pistol, a rifle, a knife and possibly some small explosives (or optional automatic weaponry).

There's not much to write here because it's mostly pretty standard, with a little twist at the climax which sort of gets untwisted at the end, which gives us a kind of twist-ish stinger. Except it wasn't surprising in the least. It was sort of like, "Oh, yeah. I guess that makes sense. Or something like it."

Not horrible, and less cliché-driving than From Within (which was really merciless as far as the stereotyping goes), still a lot less than I was hoping for.

Butterfly was definitely the winner of day 1.