Tasmanian Devils (2013)

Tasmanian Devils (2013) is a made for television horror/thriller.

The actors in this film aren’t necessarily among the worst I’ve seen in my life. As a result, it’s not a Z-movie, it’s a B-movie. But you can call it what you like: TV movie, B-movie, waste of time…

It’s all pretty equal, really!

Tasmanian Devils didn’t give me the worst time of my life. There are some amusing moments, and the dialogue isn’t too stupid at times. But on the whole, it’s ridiculous and badly made. The fact that I watched it all the way to the end shows that I still found some interest in it. Absolutely! I watched it from start to finish!

There are scenes at night and quite a few in broad daylight. You can feel the director’s real work and determination. The actors are pretty good. Overall, a less unpleasant time than usual.

Usually, I watch the beginning of a film of this kind and if I see that it’s ultra badly made, I stop. Here, it was hard to foresee how badly it was going to be done. You don’t see a scene with monsters right from the start. You have to wait a good half-hour for that. But even when I saw how badly done they were, I kept going, because I sympathized with this team.

It goes without saying that it’s because I can be such a good audience that I didn’t completely hate it. I’m not at all a fan of nanars and, deep down, I knew what to expect, let’s not kid ourselves.

In these films, the actors are mostly badly directed, I think, rather than really bad. Half of them, anyway. The creatures are very present on screen, but unfortunately the quality of their texture (due to budget constraints) is really poor.

For most viewers, the mediocre, soporific story will remain, by far, the major asset of this nameless turnip, with its execrable direction and utterly null acting. They’ll also be disappointed, as they too would have hoped for natural settings and not what looks like plastic trees and cotton snow!

The story is full of inconsistencies, and you’d think it was written by a child under the age of ten. In fact, when I was nine, I remember the teacher asked us to write fairy-tale essays, with monsters, dragons and lots of adventures. If you were brave enough, you could even record yourself on tape! Yes, I’m talking about the ’80s. We’re not all young, are we? But we were…

For those of you who’d like an even more in-depth analysis, you can read on. Otherwise… thanks for reading this far!

As its title suggests, this little horror film has been relocated to the southern Australian island of Tasmania, in a feeble attempt to inject a little originality into the film via a relative exoticism. Alas, the change of scenery, reminiscent of Canadian or North American forests, is not enough to save a feature film that would have needed much more to get out of the rut of mediocrity in which its unimaginative script has mired it.

We’re left with the classic theme of a group of characters lost in the forest, pursued and decimated by one or more monsters derived from more or less far-fetched legends or pseudo-scientific manipulations (in fact, here it’s the former, contrary to what you might think).

The plot is utterly classic (you could call it the umpteenth copy-and-paste), and not only is its development highly predictable, but the gradual disappearance of the characters, killed by the monster, is practically guessable from the start of the film. The characters are so stereotyped that a group of high-school film students would have had no trouble doing better.

The twists and turns are just like those who endure them: boringly predictable. Worst of all are the notoriously ugly monsters, not so much for their aesthetics, but for the appalling weakness of the special effects that bring them to life, which are worthy of the worst TV movies of the ’80s.

A horror film that is obviously never frightening, and one of those second-rate industrial dreck that lined the DVD bins and promotional stands as soon as it was released. I’m quite surprised that this film is Sold Out on certain sites!

Only nanar fans will appreciate it. For the general public: Totally uninteresting and to be avoided without hesitation!