A tense couple take a break in the wilderness after their relationship is exposed, and find nature red in tooth and claw - but whose nature?Couple of big themes going on here - mother and child + estrangement from nature, but I'm not sure it's worth the effort. The story is well paced, and all the creatures are nasty and exotic, but the central relationship in what is essentially a two-hander just didn't interest me.The actors are fine, but the dialogue has no charm and it's hard to imagine the characters ever having enjoyed each other's company. So basically we have to spend 100 minutes with a pair of unlikable people - especially the husband, who presents immediately as a dickhead - without a hint of humour.All the '70s influences, from twangly semi-tone music to pollution outrage. The dugong was creepy, until it heaved itself all the way in - a moment of bathos. And the wind-screen smash was an eye-roller as well.Overall, needed a better script but directed and performed fairly well.

Got sucked in by the IMDb rating for what turned out to be a long bit of disjoint rubbish, and stupid scene after stupid scene with Lousy acting, even for it's time, albeit for an interesting storyline/plot. And typical of many Australian movies of the period, trying to impress the overseas audience, with a couple of gratuitous scenes of all of the famous Australian wildlife, kangaroos, koalas, blue tongue lizard, wedge-tail eagle, cockatoos and the elusive Tasmanian Devil: and for those who don't know their Australian natural history very well, it doesn't really matter what the elusive Tasmanian Devil (which is called that because it is ONLY found in Tasmania), is doing on a mainland Australian beach. The man is an environmental vandal and the woman a typical frustrated/nagging suburban cliché, both are out of their comfort zones in the wild (nature). Man with a gun, as an answer to whatever he doesn't understand, whose answer is to shoot willy nilly in the direction of any nightly sound: and one of the stupid scenes is- down comes a woman's shoe when he shoots in the night sky. Both the man and woman manage to drive round in circles, woman at night, and man during the day. and don't even wonder, What's the point of having a 4wheel drive, if after you get bogged, you (man) simply abandon the car and run around like a chook without a head. This is not a movie of nature reaking revenge on two city slickers, but more a movie of two city slickers way out of their element.

Long Weekend is directed by Colin Eggleston and written by Everett De Roche. It stars John Hargreaves and Briony Behets. Music is by Michael Carlos and cinematography by Vincent Monton.Peter and Marcia, their marriage teetering on the rocks, go away for what is hoped will be an idyllic long weekend of camping by the sea. But as they disrespect nature, nature decides enough is enough...Australia has produced some excellent horror movies over the decades, sitting up with the best of them is this, an abject lesson in terror wrung out from a minimalist situation. What you think is just going to be a standard "when animals attack" movie, proves to be something of far more depth and consequence. The animals do indeed attack, after Peter and Marcia carelessly trample nature's beings and foliage, where she's a ball of anger and ignorance and he's a machismo searching buffoon, but the horrors are not merely confined to what old Mother nature responds with, the horrors within the couple's marriage strike hugely audible chords, even marrying up to events unfolding in this not so idyllic paradise the couple thought they had found.Director Eggleston doesn't just plunge the couple (and us) straight into terror, he affords time for the story to build, for us to get a handle on the warring pair. He also niftily throws up a grey area in the first quarter by having the first act of carelessness as being accidental, it could happen to you or I, in fact this passage of the film has tricked us into having some empathy with the clearly troubled couple, but then bam! Eggleston puts an axe in Peter's hand and a can of insecticide in Marcia's and the film shifts into another gear. Items are brought into the narrative and dangled tantalisingly, but the director isn't clumsy in reintroducing them at a later point in the picture, the timing is right because now, as the film enters the last third, it's edge of the seat time.With such a minimalist setting, and using only two humans and their pet dog, the makers need to make their key scenes work to an optimum level. Thankfully that is the case, from a swimming scene to one where Peter is alone at night by the fire being haunted by noises all around him, it's a film of genuinely scary scenes. This is where the sound department come in and do wonders, the sounds of nature are amplified considerably for total unnerving effect, while the ambient swells for build up sequences gnaw away at the senses. Both Hargreaves and Behets are natural, and excellent because of it, while there's some beautiful natural Australian vistas brought out of the screen by Monton's photography.This is not a bloody film, but it doesn't need to be, it's an exercise in sharp breath holding terror. Messages and metaphors are there to pay heed to, but mostly this is just bloody great entertainment. 8/10

I remember watching this as a child back in the day when the BBC used show a series of movies from Australia and New Zealand late at night and Long Weekend left an indelible impression on me. Then watching again on DVD a couple of decades later i found that the movie had lost none of its impact.Shot at the time of the Australian "New Wave" film making era (regarded by many as a golden age of Australian cinema) Long Weekend also tapped into a short lived sequence of movies with an ecological message. In the 1970 's film makers explored the concept of man no longer being top of the food chain whether through intelligent ants, fire starting primordial bugs or nature fighting back against mankind's abuse. At the start of the Long Weekend a news channel playing on a background television reports of birds attacking people and this is before the bickering couple have even set of for their destiny with disaster. The couple played brilliantly by John Hargreaves and Briony Behets are a fairly dislikeable pair. A positive assessment of their characters is not possible as the viewer picks over the remains of their marriage and their subsequent actions. In a last ditch attempt to save their marriage they take themselves off to the sticks for the Long Weekend.Where this movie excels is in its eerie, creepy atmosphere which is assisted by the remote swamp/coastal off the beaten track location and the influence of John Boormans Deliverance on proceedings. The false hope aroused when the abandoned vehicle is spotted on the beach and then the locating of the tent housing only a dog amplifies their isolation and the terminal level of desperation and paranoia consuming the couple. Not only is their marriage on the rocks but our urban couple are clearly out of their depth in their location. A sequence of premeditated and accidental abuse of their surroundings by the couple is paid back in spades by mother nature at times in a quasi supernatural style which causes events to spiral completely out of the couples control. There is no happy ending. A much inferior remake of this movie was made starring John Caviezel in an almost shot for shot Gus Van Sant's Psycho style which does prompt the question why.