Australian writer/director Chris Sun has built a reputation for making brutal horror films. Films like DADDY’S LITTLE GIRL and CHARLIE’S FARM showing people at their nastiest and most desperate. Now, with BOAR, he steps away from human monsters and gives us a more traditional, though still brutal, monster movie. And before you ask, no, this is not an update/reboot of RAZORBACK despite the similar creature.
Here we have a tale of a family headed by stepdad Bruce (Bill Moseley, DARK ROADS 79, MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT) venturing to the outback farm of Uncle Bernie (Nathan Jones, MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, MORTAL KOMBAT). They’ve picked a bad time to visit though. There’s been a rash of destroyed property, missing livestock and even the odd missing person. It seems a giant wild boar has decided to claim the area as its territory. And anything in it is a potential meal.
A subplot involves John Jarratt (The Possessed, PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK) and Roger Ward (MAD MAX, TURKEY SHOOT) as drunken farmers who run afoul of the beast. They have wonderful chemistry and keep the film from taking itself to seriously too soon. It’s also great to see Jarratt play a role that’s the polar opposite of Mick Taylor.
BOAR is just the film I needed to see after a run of genre films heavy on serial killers, zombies, and other human(oid) monsters. This is a high-energy creature feature with plenty of blood, gore, and action. Apart from the main characters, there are plenty of campers to keep the body count up. The attacks are well filmed and frequently bloody, with at least one death by a means I didn’t expect.
The title creature was brought to life with a mix of an animatronic boar for the more static shots and somewhat less effective CGI for shots of it in motion. The gore is mostly practical, with some CGI blood spray bringing the overall quality down a bit.
Despite that and some odd structural and pacing choices, the film moves briskly to a suitably tense final showdown. It also lets Jones step away from his usual hulking villain role and play a heroic character. He even gets to go toe to hoof with the boar in a fight as epic as any he had in the WWF.
BOAR has come out on VOD, DVD and Blu-Ray in its native Australia. Releases for other countries are pending, you can check for updates on the film’s Facebook page.