FrightFest review – Boar

My notes on Boar.

Australian genre auteur Chris Sun, who directed and co-wrote (with Kirsty Dallas) Boar, includes a self-indulgent moment here when travellers in the outback worry about ending up at the locale of Sun’s previous exploitation film, Charlie’s Farm … but this is a fond tribute to earlier ages of Ozsploitation, harking back to Russell Mulcahy’s classic Razorback in its big pig baddie and littered with veteran down under players as crotchety, beer-guzzling, sun-baked characters … including reliables John Jarratt (Wolf Creek), Steve Bisley (Mad Max), Ernie Dingo (The Fringe Dwellers), Roger Ward (Mad Max), Chris Haywood (who was in Razorback), plus big amiable muscle guy Nathan Jones (from Charlie’s Farm) and American import Bill Moseley in a rare milquetoast role.  There’s no particular origin for the monster – who is mostly a big, not-terribly mobile practical effect – and it isn’t invested with the mystic, semi-supernatural air of classic Aussie beasts in Long Weekend or Rogue … but Sun doesn’t skimp on the splat, ruthlessly killing off much of the cast with tusk impalements and spilled innards.

The early stages have a few Crocodile Dundee-style jokes, as when an out-of-towner gives a seemingly idle aboriginal a handout only to discover that the guy owns the most successful business in town and is better off than all the whitefellas who crowd into the local boozer and trade quips over pints with the tough-talking publican (Melissa Tkauz).  Into this backwater come Bruce (Moseley) and Debbie (Simone Buchanan) and their extended family, out to visit Debbie’s cousin Bernie (Jones) … only then the killings start and various combinations of folk set out into the desert to hunt the pig, mostly coming to a bad end.  It’s an ordinary little movie, sort of likeable, but it’d have to root around hard to get into any Top Five Killer Pig Movie lists.

Here’s the FrightFest listing.

Here’s a trailer.