HoopTober 8: Mosquito Takes Mandragon

Movie 72
11th of 12 countries: Australia

I am sure this one is going to play very differently depending on the individual. It might be seen as some as too oblique and possibly nonsensical. Others might be turned off at how unappealing our only two real characters are. But this one hit me right between the eyes, I absolutely loved it.

Sometimes a film wins you over as it goes along, but sometimes you just know you're on board from the opening scenes. That was my experience with Long Weekend. I can't even explain why that is, but there was just something there between Colin Eggleston's particular style of direction and the setting and subject itself. I was just immediately 100% engrossed in it.

I had been somewhat prepared for the film, as this is an Ozploitation classic I have heard a lot about and have been wanting to see for a long time. The story concerns a (rather unhappily) married couple, members of that youngish brand of middle class up-and-comers. We catch them just as they are about to leave for a long weekend of camping near the beach - obviously Peter is more keen on this than Marcia, who objects to this bluntly and frequently (I like to think of these two as an Australianised incestuous union between two of the Brady kids, but that's me). In the set-up, we are carefully shown how little regard they have for the world around them - and nature in general (Marcia assumes they'll leave Peter's dog at home with three cans of dog food dumped in his bowl, because that should last him three days).

This film feels like some kind of sibling to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds - this is all about Mother Nature herself turning on our protagonists. But it takes a slight detour via Picnic at Hanging Rock - there's an incredibly palpable sense of eerie foreboding that hangs over the film, which contrasts sharply with the idyllic setting (despite how horrific things become, this movie really made me want to go back to Australia and go camping near the beach).

It does move beyond the eerie, incorporating some elements of "animal-attack" movies and although the threat remains somewhat ambiguous, this doesn't mean the pacing is slow. The tension and incident builds at the perfect pace until it becomes very clear we are watching a genuine horror film, not just some eerie metaphysical psychological thriller (although it's that too).

The real genius here is in how Eggleston convincingly creates a sort of horror monster out of nature itself. I've spent enough time bushwalking and hiking to know how terrifying things can get if you get a bit of bad luck (or in my case more than once, if you don't plan properly and just wander off into the wilderness with an ill-deserved confidence in your own navigational abilities). I've even found myself in places which felt a little bit like they didn't want you there and which spooked me slightly for no reason I could really explain (on the two occasions that happened to me, I later discovered that two spots in question were reputedly aboriginal sacred sites - how wild is that?). So, for me, the idea of being in a wilderness which consciously wants to do you harm is a really compelling premise. And even if that concept sounds silly to you, I think Long Weekend might succeed in making you feel the threat.

Colin Eggleston seemed to go on to make a number of rather trashy looking exploitation films, but I will now try and see them all because even if they don't measure up to Long Weekend, I was so impressed with his direction here that I just need to see what else he did. There is some stunning cinematography here as well, the gorgeous location (Bournda Beach on the New South Wales south coast, I believe) is a character in its own right - beautiful to an otherworldly degree, but terrible if abused like it is by these two idiots. And Michael Carlos' experimental and largely electronic score is essential in creating the ominous mood - it reminded me a lot of the music in Let's Scare Jessica to Death.

I have drawn comparisons to many films in an attempt to describe this film, but the fact is it's something quite unique. And quite special. When I get around to drawing up an "Ozploitation Ranked" list, this will be near the top.