Just finished viewing an Australian sci-fi/horror that hasn't received much in the way of good reviews.
Titled
The Dustwalker, there's more going on in this movie than the tagline suggests but you don't learn that until close to the end.
Unfortunately, the synopsis most often quoted on websites causes problems as it isn't accurate in a number of ways. Something does indeed land on earth and it definitely is the cause of the problem. However, it's never clear whether it's some sort of spacecraft, a meteor, space debris, etc. etc. There is a second landing though, definitely of some sort of ship.
It suffers from being an indie movie with a small budget plus it's a slow mover. Some people found it tedious to watch and I see that it could cause you to nod off if you're feeling tired because as interesting as the premise is, the movie never quite reaches the level of tension needed to keep you glued to the screen. Decent enough acting and editing but you see the lack of experience for some of the cast and crew at various times throughout. And then there's the well used "local girl wants to leave the country town and move to the city for better opportunities" trope for the main character.
To be fair though, it appears the film was a project from one of the Australian film & television schools so if that's the case, it's a fairly polished product for it's lack of budget and small number of experienced cast & crew.
Despite all that, it's worth watching at least once. The main features are a small group of people isolated by distance (it's set in a remote Australian outback town) and then by a communications failure, some of them get infected with some sort of fungus that essentially turns them into (almost) mindless killers. I say almost mindless, because despite the tagline saying they become indiscriminate killers, they hunt down and kill their family members while generally ignoring anyone else (unless that person tries to stop the killer from attacking their family members).
That in itself is pretty damned interesting to me, suggestive of some sort of coordinated activity on behalf of the fungus infected people and it's never quite clear if the infected are killing their family members to protect them from infection or to harvest them or if it's simple uncontrolled rage... but if that's the case, why specifically hunt down members of your family?
I like the mystery of that.
The local police (and here, the lack of budget really shows, the police are in civilian attire at all times and the "police" vehicles could easily be mistaken for a security company's vehicles) try to follow up on a series of missing people and then discover other people acting strangely. Later, some of the missing people are no longer missing but they ain't friendly!
Later on, an alien creature appears but it's following an agenda that isn't revealed until close to the end and then it's behaviour all starts making sense. The survivors huddle for protection in the local police station and are essentially under siege.
Worth pillaging as the basis of a scenario or for a different take on the alien incursion theme (although we have seen it done before in other sci-fi movies). Plus, it can be viewed for free at a few sites on the net including YouTube (although the last five minutes of sound were missing when I watched it
For those with an interest in the filming location, principal filming was done in the rural Western Australian town of Cue. That's in my neck of the woods although it's a good 500km from where I live so I'm not going to be visiting anytime soon - but it's worth looking up on Google Maps if you want to see how isolated some of these Aussie outback towns are!