LONG WEEKEND

THEIR CRIME WAS AGAINST NATURE… NATURE FOUND THEM GUILTY.

Attempting to resurrect their failing marriage, Peter and Marcia set out on a camping trip to a deserted stretch of the Australian coastline in the hope that a long weekend in the sunshine will help them patch up their differences. They trample through the countryside with callous disregard for the environment. But when the animals start to seek vengeance, an idyllic vacation becomes a battle for survival.

A creepy, slow burning, and suspenseful eco-thriller about man’s mistreatment of nature and nature’s well-tuned collective revenge, Long Weekend is one of the finest examples of Australian exploitation of the ‘70s and ‘80s. An Ozploitation classic! 

“It was not until the 1970s that a film industry developed in Australia: parallel to the artistic successes of directors such as Peter Weir, a captivating B-film production delivered works like Mad Max. The most original contribution to the so-called Ozploitation, however, came from screenwriter Everett De Roche whose Long Weekend was the last word in a then popular subgenre:  a horror revision of the adventure film (usually involving cannibals or alligators as attackers), resulting in a mysterious, almost wordless and all the more visually powerful ecological fable. Conventional shocks are barely necessary here. An upscale couple wants to patch up their marriage by going on a camping weekend. Their ruthless handling of flora and fauna is followed by nature’s righteous revenge, implemented as a kind of Tarkovskyan nightmare, composed from increasingly threatening widescreen shots and eerie sounds of the wilderness.”
– Christoph Huber, The Austrian Film Museum

“Screenwriter Everett De Roche is one of the unsung heroes of ’70s/’80s Ozploitation. /…/ However, while many of [his] pictures would prove to be much more commercially minded (Road Games was, at the time of its production, allotted the biggest budget in the history of Australian film), none would match the pure paranoia of his sophomore feature writing effort, Long Weekend; a waking nightmare on sun bathed down under beaches, during which a couple is repeatedly castigated by the environment for their karmic foolishness. /…/ It’s an unnerving marriage of 2.35 vistas with creep-inducing sonic design, and should be studied by anybody who ever wants to make a horror film during their lifetime.”
– Jacob Knight, Birth. Movies. Death.