What Weir succeeds in doing here is maintaining an atmosphere of pervasive dread throughout The Last Wave. With his massive fire hoses he will flood the vast red outback with a rare rainstorm, and then move towards his focused territory, by letting the elements smash windows and enter the man made domain. The rain-clouds hover over the urbanised city like a great grey shroud, and what little life and colour is lost in the showers. And then he will use movement in order to close into our characters. First, closeups of a trickle of water down stairs that seems almost harmless in comparison, but quickly gains momentum and a determined will of its own. Then he will slowly zoom into the family dinner table, as if the water has already reclaimed upstairs and is about to take the dining room too. It's a marvellous little bit of camera-induced claustrophobia, fear in the most apprehensive way, slow moving, implacable, unstoppable. Of course it is just a bathtub overflowing, but it begins to mean a lot more for David Burton, the Sydney-based solicitor. Unfortunately what Weir cannot do is match this with mood with an engaging, thoughtful narrative. It is not dissimilar to the problems I had with Picnic at Hanging Rock; a vague, ominous sense of foreboding, mystical powers that go unexplained, a mystery that goes beyond mankind's grasp. And it is broached in a way that has become more and more wearisome in recent times; a white man accidentally stumbles upon a thousands of years old secret, a festishsised native of the land, the mystic power that runs through their veins. David attempts to unlock the mysteries in a court session, but even more so from a modern perspective it feels like he is not only explaining this to himself, but to the audience. There is no subtext, no discourse attempted to unravel the multitude of issues regarding the Indigenous Aboriginal identity, how it is morphed within a urbanised context, how their morality is at odds with the western-centric law system, how their sense of community has been displaced, and so on. It descends into your standard horror/thriller riddled with suspense. It is a pity too, because the suspense is so well done. The visuals become a way of boring into the subconscious of David, and the awakening of his paranoia and fears - as the Mulkurul's duty is to warn of the coming apocalypse. His visions becomes surreal, and flicker between reality and dreamtime; a plague of descending frogs ala bible style, a stream of water trickling from his car dash that had just giving a rational explanation for the black globs of rain obscuring his windscreen, and then his whole car enveloped in a underwater trance. His dreams begin to haunt him - the camera moves quickly through the halls of the apartment, unnerved, as if running from an unseen beast, and then into David's own bedroom, peering down upon his place of solace, stalking, observing, threatening. Car fog-lights in the night become a shimmering, gliding phenomena, marring his rational mind. And in Wain's soundtrack, with the sinister synthesizer backing, and the soft but creeping didgerirdoo, we become aware of danger before we even see it, as though we too have inherited David's dreamlike sixth sense. But Weir veers too deeply, and what was seductive and fear-inducing becomes disorientating. He robs us of our senses by having David manoeuvre through dark tunnels and caves, and in a rare moment of genius, contrasts the feeble light of his flash-light alongside Charlie's dancing, lively flame. But he turns away, grabs blindly at a relic that may or may not be important, and staggers out into the real world again. This ending is supposed to be ambiguous, but Weir renders this effect impotent by showing the unending wrath and power of the waves of the ocean in an entirely separate frame from from David's blinking, disbelieving eyes. This seems to be the result of a small budget - and if you look carefully and spot the surfer on the beach of David's apocalyptic vision, you would tend to agree.

Mood, Atmosphere, and Dread. How's that for a Supernatural Movie Template. The Aussie Director Peter Weir (now entrenched in Hollywood with critical acclaim) uses His Once Limited Resources to Display Artistic Flourishes with Enhanced Realism that Never Allows the SFX or the Sensationalism of the Story's Surrealism to Draw Distracting Attention to Itself.It's an Eeriie and Ominous and at times Chilling Clash of Cultures. The Stoic Portrayal from Richard Chamberlain as a Confused and Confounded Lawyer Bombarded with a Bizarre murder Case and Dreams and Experiences He Struggles to Comprehend is Fine. His Family is Literally Drowned out of the Movie by the Power of Aboriginal Mind Control and His Inability to Understand.There are Images to Impress and a Very Creepy Soundtrack where both Music and Sound Effects are Unique and Important to the Movie's Tone. The Native Aboriginal "Actors" are Used for Effective Enhancement and the Polar Opposite of Chamberlain's Blonde Hair, Blue Eyed Caucasian Race.The Climax in the Cave is Haunting and may Drag On a bit too Long, but that is a Nit-Pick because it does Look Literally like a Haunted Cave. The Titled Last Wave is Shown as a Minimalist Make Up Your Own Mind Ending.

In 1977, I doubt if audiences were as open to a film like this as they might be today. Assaulted in the 1970s with such fare as "Rosemary's Baby" it would have been natural to reject this without giving it a chance.Thankfully, DVDs are forever.Weir creates a film of foreign concepts, foreign to us but at home to an Aboringine still in touch with tribal ways.Hail stones the size of bricks arrive out of a clear blue sky. Muddy rain falls on Sydney. The sky is filled with rainbows and strange southern lights in the middle of the day.If you surrender yourself to the Aborigine concept of dream time, it makes perfect sense. What is surprising is to find that an Australian (Richard Chamberlain) has been forecast as part of this end of cycle.Weir used real tribal people and gave them a kind of supervisory approval for the script to be as authentic as possible.If you let your mind absorb the film without defense systems, it packs a worthwhile punch.

I saw this film yesterday at my local independent cinema. Both its main man, Chamberlain, and the director Weir are unknown to me although I gather from looking around here that both have had pretty illustrious careers.I won't revisit the plot. Lots of other people have already done that. Suffice to say, the film's main strength, for me, was its unsettling ambiance. Much of that has to do with Chamberlain's unfathomable persona and vaguely alien looks. The electronica soundtrack adds to the mood. The script is spartan, with room to breathe, which further adds to the unsettling tone.The special effects are as simplistic as you'd expect from an Australian film made at the back end of the 70s.As someone else has mentioned, the climax "wave" probably suffers as a consequence of budgetary limitations.