- Directed by Roger Scott
- Written by Roger Scott
- Stars Dafna Kronental, Sarah Armanious, Mathew Cooper, Sam Delich
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 25 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Metttw13T24
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
The cast was good, and the production values were all excellent. It’s never clear how much is real and how much is supernatural; the lines are blurred, which is interesting. It’s slow-moving and stretched too thin, though. It’s not quite a winner.
Synopsis
Pria mentions to a coworker that she’s up for a promotion, and it’s going to be either her or Ben, but not both.
Ben wants to pick up some samples from the marshes, and Pria agrees to go along. Will is there, he’s her new assistant. They are all science students. Credits roll as everyone drives away into the countryside.
Will asks if he can get malaria out there. They stop at Darcy’s Petrol Station, and Pria talks to a man there who doesn’t approve of what they do, although she denies it. He’s a jerk.
Ben explains to Will that farmers and people have cleared out miles and miles of swampland to grow crops. They arrive and set up camp; Will points out that there’s no cell service way out here. The three take their samples.
Night falls again. Ben tells the story about the Swagman, a ghost that haunts the swamps. The next morning, they run into a pig hunter and his wife. They’re here illegally with no permit, and Pria tries to talk tough, but the hunter doesn’t listen; he’s the guy from the gas station.
That night, they hear someone in the woods right outside of their camp. In the morning, they find a pig’s head in their campfire. It’s three hours to the nearest phone, so Pria says they just need to get back to work. Will makes “Deliverance” jokes before they all get back to work.
That evening, Pria and Will kiss and sneak off into the woods together. They have sex in the mosquito-infested weeds, and Will chokes her to death. No, that was just a dream. She goes outside to cool down, and something grabs her from behind. Or… was that a dream too?
Pria and Ben wake up in the morning, and apparently, nothing happened to her last night. Ben warns her about getting too close to Will, who is only a student.
Pria then goes off to get her samples alone. It doesn’t take long before she starts hearing things. She gets scared and goes back to camp. She’s had enough and is ready to leave, but Ben wants another couple of days. They argue, and he says he can be done in the morning; he’s been dragging this out for some reason. She gets angry and goes to bed.
Pria wakes up in the middle of the night, and there’s clearly someone outside her tent with sharp shears. She panics and runs off into the darkness, where she encounters “the Swagman” before passing out.
She wakes up in her completely intact tent in the morning. She feels terrible, so Ben and Will go off to do their samples, leaving her at the camp. Pria meets up with the pig hunter’s dog, but no pig hunters. She goes looking for the guys but keeps hearing and seeing things.
Meanwhile, Ben and Will are lost. They find their missing camera, stolen by the pig hunters. There’s a video on it of something killing the pig hunters. They all start hearing the Swagman’s whistle.
A naked man runs out of the weeds, but he’s pulled back in. The three science students follow him and find him hanging from a tree– it’s the pig hunter! The three watch as the Swagman cuts up his victim. The man gets the pieces he wants and then leaves.
There is a great deal of panicky running and freaking out. Ben goes off on his own and is immediately caught by the baddie. They soon find him, hanging upside down. They can’t get him down fast enough, so the Swagman guts him.
Pria runs and hides, but eventually, the Swagman catches her. He smacks her and walks away, leaving her alive. She catches up to Will, in shock. “He’s feeding now. Once he’s finished, he’ll come after us.”
They set back off through the tall grass to find their camp but keep running in circles. Even when they know they’re doing it, they wind up back at the same place.
A snake bites Will, and he goes into convulsions as the Swagman approaches. Pria’s right there, but she doesn’t see when the Swagman takes Will. Pria walks through the swamp and gets leeches on her.
After what seems like hours of crawling through weeds (to us!), Pria finally makes it to the road.
A police car finally pulls up, and Ben and Will are with them. No, wait, that was a hallucination. Now the Swagman’s got her. He drags her off into the tall grass, kicking and screaming all the way.
Commentary
It’s sort of “Blair Witch” in the tall, marshy grass. It’s got good atmosphere and a genuinely creepy setting that’s not some old haunted house this time.
How many days does a trip to pick up some bio samples take? They spent two or three nights there even before any action started. As a side note, they all wore the same outfits for all those days. I have no idea what a four-day-old swamp water-soaked shirt smells like, and I’d just as soon never find out. What must that sex scene have been like? Then there are all the bugs. Australians are tough people; I’ll give them that.
Was the Swagman a ghost, as Ben said? What kind of ghost needs to eat people? If he’s just a serial killer, he sure does get around in a supernatural manner.
It takes a very long time for there to be any action, probably too long. Once it does start, it’s mostly just running around in the weeds, trying to avoid a guy who may or may not be supernatural.
It’s well made, looks good, and has decent acting, but there’s not enough meat on the bones here. It’s just too slow and too stretched out.