Main cast: Alexandra Park (Bailey), Sisi Stringer (Grace), and Harry Greenwood (Ben)
Director: Sean Lahiff

I have to hand it to Australia: they are keeping afloat the “monsters in the wilderness” film market in a time when other people are resorting to jump scare bores featuring CGI nuns and clowns. Maybe it’s because these folks are living in a country with some of the deadliest wildlife around, heh.

Carnifex is one such movie.

Documentary maker Bailey together with conservationist folks Grace and Ben want to make a film about the poor animals in the Australian outbacks and how these creatures are coping after a recent devastating bushfire.

Okay, folks expecting a monster flick will have to put up with almost an entire film worth of PETA and Greenpeace mumbo-jumbo. Sure, something is stalking them, but the body count in this movie is abysmal and even suspect—only the men get killed—and the sight of the monster in question is more laughable than anything else.

Now, I’m all about saving nature and what not, but the yammering here is delivered through the typical out-of-touch manner prevalent in film media, often enforcing emotional “Forget about everything else, animals come first!” talking points over cold hard science and trying to pretend that nature is made up of cute mammals and pretty insects without all those icky reptiles and other not-so-cuddly things.

Hence, I find myself rolling up my eyes probably too often for my liking while watching this thing!

Also, for a filmmaker, Bailey doesn’t act like one. Sure, she films things now and then, but she doesn’t seem to care about filming anything aside from interview sessions with Ben and Grace.

Then again, the conservationists don’t act capable either. This movie sees them often blundering through bushes chasing after some animal only to lose it and go oh well. Maybe their actual job description was fundraising for parties in the office, and their colleagues send them over to Bailey in hopes that all three of them will get lost in the woods and are never found again.

All in all, this is a film that will most likely bore people that aren’t into interminable blathering about PETA-isms and these characters’ vapid social drama. That’s a shame as there is some lovely scenery of nature in this movie, and the cast members aren’t bad in their roles.

Maybe this one would have worked better as a pseudo-documentary about three idiots prancing in nature instead of pretending to be some monster flick.