Film #15 — 1/1 The Animals Are Pissed at Us Film; 3/6 Countries (Australia)
By C. Ramsay
Primarily following an American couple who find themselves in Australia for different reasons, Razorback is about a giant wild boar that has made a small town and its surrounding area its hunting grounds. Featuring amusingly gruesome death sequences, the film implements lots of humour throughout, particularly through the use of some incredibly funny prop comedy.
When tension is needed, a key shot is typically left running long so that the viewer can notice details in the background, allowing the audience to reach certain realizations at the same time as the characters. This works very effectively, yet this slow, simmering tension is almost always instantly obliterated to prioritize shock value.
Similarly, the boar animatronic is impressively built. The size of a rhinoceros, its snarling, brute face is often shown to scare viewers and the characters alike, combined with shaky cam from the boar’s perspective during chase sequences in an attempt to holistically express its physical fearsomeness, speed, and power. The downside to this is that aside from the face the animatronic doesn’t have much mobility to it, and efforts to use it extensively in certain scenes end up giving it a lumbering quality that’s antithetical to the beast’s reputation. Surprisingly, the scariest shots of the creature end up being glimpses of its back caught while it’s unaware it’s being watched from afar and is therefore standing mostly still, the bulk of its body partially concealed by some object that doubles as a way to reinforce its size.
There are some absolutely stunning shots of Australian landscapes interjected throughout the film, as well as some really beautiful lighting during a long nighttime sequence. Shadow and light play are generally used fairly extensively, thanks to cinematographer Dean Semler, known also for works such as The Road Warrior, Apocalypto, and Dances with Wolves. Overall, the shot composition is of a much higher caliber than the rest of the film, which over the course of its runtime starts to stand out as incongruous, but it does help that given the amount of humour involved, the rest of the film doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Star rating (/5): ★★½
Recommend?: Worth checking out