Let's be straight up about Long Weekend. Despite the references to Nature, and indeed, the spot chosen for a camping holiday does indeed appear to harbour a malicious spirit (manifest in inhabited animals), Long Weekend is at its heart a movie about trying to make a failing marriage work, with all the frustrations to do with mistakes and forgiveness and sharing. The cleverness of the movie is that the malicious Nature detracts sufficiently that we don't actually begin to hate this couple and their indomitable efforts to tolerate each other sufficiently to turn back the clock to happier times. If this wasn't a horror movie then only drama masochists would like this picture. But as a horror movie it is a different picture, and does have a lot going for it. Oddly, Nature, as a warning perhaps, declares war on the couple long before they provoke it. That is a delicious idea for a movie. Long Weekend reminds me of movies such as The Shout (1978), another out there idea movie, or Wake In Fright (1971), a similar study of a downward spiral. All three movies have that brave experimental style of the 1970s, all are a form of unique doom (which is bold even today), and all are high standard productions that manage to age well. For that alone it's well worth a look.
Review of Long Weekend
