Didn't realize these were a written series originally. That said, I thought is was a pretty descent storyline- remarkably similar to Red Dawn, but still well written. It would have been good to see more defiant acts and action along the way, or at least the implication of a sequel.

Very weak. Basically a made-for-(Australian) kids TV movie that somehow ended up on the big screen. Very implausible, unoriginal and full of plot holes (hence being made for kids - they wouldn't have seen something like this before, and the thought that the heroes can be teenagers will appeal to them).Acting is incredibly wooden.Saddest thing is that the movie is clearly set up for a sequel, so there is probably another movie like this on the way.Avoid.

As Sun Tzu once said "to defeat evil Asians, you should employ teenage girls who have never used assault rifles, because only they can save Australia!" This movie was an adaptation of the first book in a would-be franchise (had the movie not died at the global box office) about some teenagers who return to their home after a camping/hiking trip to find that their home town in Australia has been occupied by some miscellaneous Asians. Of course, I use the word "miscellaneous" because they never actually clarify where they come from and absolutely none of them have personalities besides "evil" or "silly" or "cannon fodder". What I will say is that the movie has perfectly fine production values, I never felt distracted by anything other than the flimsy writing. Although, I thought the blood effects were reminiscent of The Last Stand - a movie in which blood is presented as weird red mist that doesn't land on anything. I never felt unconvinced by the action scenes, even though I was completely uninvolved thanks to the poorly written characters and the flimsy script. The actors and actresses don't do any more than what they're meant to do as their respective characters. They don't really do very much to convince the audience (or critics) that their performance or characters are memorable. The action scenes are disappointingly void, thanks to their plain or slightly agitated expressions that the various performers show while they are being shot at by the miscellaneous Asians who are arguably more convincing than the main characters.Unfortunately, the script is so flimsy that a lot of scenes lack gravitas. What I mean by this is that the character interactions aren't realistic or what you would really expect from the characters that have been developed. Needy Christian girl becomes pseudo-war- hero? Bored-looking teenager gives motivational speech to a stoner about his idle behaviour? I wish the movie would be a bit less "movie"; a lot of the dialogue is cliché or some of the movie's moments seem ripped- off or rehashed from elsewhere. It doesn't help that the film is so disappointingly cynical either.Why did this movie fail, though? Personally, I don't feel like this movie deserved to fail like it did. There was clearly an audience for it, even though this movie doesn't appeal to me, it appeals to many young adults out there. Some of which bought the books that this movie came from. The production values are definitely hard to deny, but I still don't feel as if it is as impressive as a movie such as The Raid: Redemption which had a smaller budget. I would like to blame the poor marketing and the R rating this film earned.To be honest, this film isn't very R rated, and if this was advertised properly then I would guarantee a box office success. This film has action and character drama and is full of content and some of the set pieces could match those seen in movies such as The Hunger Games. It's just a shame that the posters and trailers seemed so lifeless, bland and generic - with no sense of joy or character. It's even more of a shame that the marketing wasn't exactly misleading either, because that's what this cynical mess was...

Having read the books when I was very young, and largely forgotten them since, I came into this more or less blind.Having said that, either there were some major plot holes I missed as a child or there were some terrible decisions made. There are a lot of issues, the below are the four that annoyed me the most.Random civilian vehicles are never bulletproof, no matter how big they are. Neither are rotting wooden gates. Also, crashing tends to throw people inside the vehicle about, especially if they're not strapped in (double especially if they're not strapped in, in the bucket being used to do the ramming and already have a bullet wound).Petrol does not explode except for under very specific conditions, none of which are met in both times this is used, otherwise it just burns (the first time, I was legitimately wondering what she was up to. Is she making some kind of distraction? Then the lawn mower blew up and killed three soldiers). Normally I'd let a movie get away with this, but this is a fact I first learned from the books.There is an actual line in the movie where they say the book is usually better than the movie. This almost seems apologetic and pulled me out of the movie at a point I was hoping to be drawn back inThe invading army is laughably inept (despite invading the whole of Australia overnight), including using flashlights when trying to sneak up on the enemy, not shooting at oncoming vehicles, being chased from their posts by a herd of cows and not one but two military vehicles being outmaneuvered by a dump truck. About five of them also manage to get outflanked and wiped out at one point by a small girl with no weapons training (and probably never having held a gun before given her views on the world) who is suddenly strong enough to completely eliminate recoil on her fully automatic weapon It's a real shame, really. The movie starts strong, I enjoyed getting to know the characters, and their reactions throughout were usually quite believable. But the moment any real action occurred it just failed completely. Oh, and if the very last pose had been cut, the movie would have ended on a much better note.