A friend of mine from England showed the DVD to me when he came to visit - and I couldn't believe how lame and UN-tense this so-called thriller was... good god, where do I begin? The plot was un-original, acting surprisingly wooden (the director must be blamed), flabby editing and totally hokey sound design (the overuse of whip-pan sound was cringe-worthy). And the tension? It was about as tense as watching dry paint stay dry.
Then I watched the extras on the DVD. Lots of handy advice for new filmmakers, but I watched with amazement as the main crew "bigged-up" this film as if it was a genius early George Lucas effort. The fact it got a fancy screening at BAFTA beggared belief... and I thought the Aussie film industry only produced "try-hard" films.
I showed it to my film school lecturer just to make sure I wasn't being unduly naive in my reaction, and she was even more shocked at how bad it was, especially considering the budget that went into it.
If you Brits can produce utter genius like "Shaun Of The Dead", how on earth do you produce tripe like "Ten Minutes"?
