Van Diemen's Land

Bleak and claustrophobic, this grinds slowly to it's inevitable conclusion - it has something of the feel of a Cormac McCarthy novel. The Tasmanian setting is beautifully shot - cold, wet and utterly indifferent to the plight of the men.

In the early 1800's, eight men escape from a brutal penal colony in remote Tasmania and try to survive in the harsh wilderness. Their mistrust of each other flares up when they run out of food in the middle of nowhere. It's a bleak and harrowing tale of hopelessness, violence and cannibalism, where the antagonist is the unforgiving land itself. While this dramatization of a true story is slow moving, it's also very tense and excellently shot.

A brutal and violent version of Valhalla Rising.

Very eerie, brutal, dirty and brilliant story at the backwoods of Tasmania. Great movie making in many levels. There was not much of character backgrounds but it was not necessary, since you can read between lines everything they did not say. He was a quiet man.

The film unfolds to be just as bleak, relentless, and eerily beautiful as the west Tasmanian landscape of its setting. This is an excellent debut from director Jonathan auf der Heide and the premise is sold with conviction. The Australian actors do a great job with accents and even the use of Irish. My only disappointment is that the Q&A at the end revealed an equally fascinating aftermath to the plot's events that couldn't have been comfortably inserted into the film.

An intriguing slow burn. Feels like some weird combination of Valhalla Rising and The Proposition, with maybe a little Herzog mixed in. Gorgeous cinematography, thoughtful compositions, and tremendous acting. That said, it's a simple film. It does what it does with little fanfare and no pretension.

A movie so raw and dirty, I believe I got an infection just watching it. The wound is now festering, and I'll be needing an amputation if I am to survive.