This represents all that is wrong with Aussie cinema!
It's boggling to see so many positive reviews for Red Hill. It is a poorly-plotted, morally simplistic, revenge tale.
And it is yet another example of why Australian films for the past ten years have been consistently poor.
The protagonist does nothing more than go from A to B to C without contributing anything to the story. The 'twist' at the end is designed to give Kwanten's character a purpose, but it comes ridiculously late.
The inclusion of the panther is pointless and, frankly, screams out for what this movie should have been about.
The villain is little more than Jason Vorhees. A masked killer, silently murdering without emotion, all the while, lumbering around like Karloff's Frankenstein.
The dialogue is atrocious, with Steve Bisley especially stumbling with Americanisms. "If he comes, he'll be bringing hell with him."
The scenes lack any tension. The killer, like in Friday the 13th, is always 'just there all of a sudden' and, like Vorhees, seems to have a supernatural sense of where people are hiding.
How many people die on their knees, or stomachs, crying out, "Please"? Yawn. And Kwanten seems to recover instantly from his stomach injury. One minute he's crawling along, the next he's running flat out down the street, dodging flaming debris.
The problem with Aussie films is that they all suffer from poor scripts. No-one seems willing to work with script editors, script doctors etc. Aussie films look beautiful, but play out with cringe-worthy amateurism.