This atmospheric, off-kilter ’70s horror film begins with Peter (John Hargreaves) and Marcia (Briony Behets) embarking on a weekend camping trip on the beach.
Peter and Marcia are so embittered towards each other, so locked in their sniping, contemptuous death-spiral of a marriage, that no beach on earth could save them. All the same, it doesn’t help that this one is, right from the start, an eerie folk horror beach: the locals don’t know it, the road to it seems to go in endless circles in the dark, and it’s “just before the abattoir.”
Long Weekend is about the natural world lashing out against two people who treat it with destructive disregard, and that makes the abattoir detail all the better. It’s like the air at the beach must already smell faintly of blood. The outback has tolerated that; a slaughterhouse is unpleasant, but it’s following nature’s own logic, if not on nature’s own scale. It’s food.
Peter and Marcia may seem like less of a blight, but they’re unpredictable, unmotivated, and uncontained. Peter tosses a still-burning cigarette out his car window, setting the bush alight. Marcia steals and smashes an eagle’s egg. She creates clouds of insecticide to kill ants who have the temerity to eat the food she left lying about outside. Peter sprays bullets into the sea in a wild attempt to kill a possible shark, and then a dead dugong washes up on the beach. In the purest asshole move of all, he keeps half-chopping down trees. Even he admits he doesn’t know why.
Nature apparently feels like Peter and Marcia shouldn’t make their marital crisis its problem, and so it sets out to eliminate the couple.
Long Weekend is at its best as the horror amps up, with writer Everett De Roche and director Colin Eggleston emphasizing the existential dread of two self-absorbed people slowly becoming aware that they’re not on top of anything out here. They came out to the bush with thousands of dollars of camping gear, ready to either dominate nature (Peter) or ignore it (Marcia), and instead, it’s not only turning on them but swallowing them up. It’s like their protagonist status is dwindling before their eyes: now, as De Roche told Spectacular Optical, they’re “cancer cells.” They understood the world around them as being composed of disparate, controllable parts, but now it’s a cohesive body, a system bent on killing them.
They are tiny. The Happening tried to make you believe people could run from the wind; Long Weekend knows Marcia and Peter can’t run from the world they’re walking on. But it lets them try, to magnificent effect. There’s a scene where Marcia sprints through the woods in the dark, and it almost feels like the scenery is repeating on her in real-time, as if she’s on a treadmill. The night is filled with animal noises, screeches and calls, all too shrill or too loud; alarms and sirens, each one rocketing up Marcia’s heart-rate and filling her with useless adrenaline. The trees are sticky with cobwebs. She’s not going anywhere—except back again, as characters go in every horror movie. Meanwhile, Peter is the pursued in one of the slowest but most unnerving chase scenes since Diabolique: each time he sees the dead dugong, it’s closer. The sand he heaped on it has fallen away. It stinks. The crabs have been eating it. Its child is crying from the waves, and it sounds like a human baby.
Eggleston doesn’t stage more of this than he has to. We get to see one or two live animal attacks, but otherwise, it’s just the way the world seems to close in on Peter and Marcia like a fist, the way the once-empty landscape now seems not only busy but aware. This is a movie that feels like a novel, where the horror is most present not in incident but in a breakdown of the characters’ subjective experience. Prose is perspective, and this is an estranging of perspective.
Even if its goals would arguably be a better fit for another medium, Long Weekend uses its format effectively for the most part. It’s well-shot and comes up with some memorable images—blood and yolk dripping down a tree, for one—and there’s always something to be said for the impact of filming live animals. The De Roche interview I linked above also talked about how the animals were deliberately portrayed as “benign-looking and not overtly aggressive,” so that this wouldn’t be a movie about how Australian wildlife is inherently wacky and dangerous; they’re not threatening but responding to a threat. Live-action, with the implicit neutrality of the camera, can capture that distinction in a way that a story embedded in human characters’ POVs couldn’t.
Once Long Weekend becomes more open about its horror aspirations, it’s interesting even when it isn’t scary. Only the Peter-Marcia relationship makes it occasionally feel like a slog, turning deliberate, meditative ’70s pacing into suffocating unhappiness that can border on the parodic. Look no further than the scene where Peter, hours after the incident, says, “I ran over a kangaroo tonight,” and Marcia turns to stare out the window with all her might. Or if you do keep looking, land on Marcia crying, “I didn’t have to have an abortion, Peter!”
Ah, well. At least the scenes that are heaviest on these kinds of interactions still have on-point small horror touches, like some meat spoiling almost as soon as Marcia takes it from the fridge, or a swarm of mosquitoes descending on a trigger-happy Peter. (Chekhov’s spear gun goes off while it’s still hanging on the wall, too, but that’s a little too showy for my taste.) I also like that Marcia and Peter react differently to all this, that Peter is both more destructive and more repentant—and, in that repentance, assumes nature cares for his apologies—while Marcia, who hates it all from the start, recognizes the mutual animosity sooner and wants to leave as soon as she can. Maybe either one of them could have gotten out alone, if they’d split up earlier. But hey, the trip was supposed to bring them together. In a way, it succeeded.
Long Weekend is streaming on Kanopy.
About the writer
Lauren James
Lauren James is a writer who wears many different hats (and pen names). She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two cats.
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Anthologized
A little slice of American folklore that feels like it's been here all along.
Streaming Shuffle
You make your royal bed, and you lie in it.
Anthologized
Alone in vast space and timeless infinity: one man in a ghost town.
Streaming Shuffle
A beautiful slice-of-life film that helped make a career.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Justified, Season Two, Episode Eight
“I try to be whatever’s required.”
This is a whole lot of setup for something that’ll pay off later. If it works, it’s because the show is fundamentally entertaining – it’s blatantly setting up dominoes here, but it’s doing it through witty dialogue and a few twists (didn’t expect the Peeners to come back at all, let alone right here). I often think of how The Shield gets right to the point, one way or another – always saying something, always conveying some truth about humanity in a natural and entertaining way. Justified gets away with not having something to say by saying something beautiful.
Boyd is so fucking cool. Here, he gets to preach in a different context entirely. One thing I remember about this show from years ago is Lauren remarking that Shane Vendrell wants to be a leader but is ultimately a follower, and Boyd wants to be a follower but is ultimately a leader. I’m not fully seeing that yet, even though I do know Boyd has to fully believe in what he’s doing or there’s no point. What’s interesting about Raylan is seeing a rare moment where he’s on the job but not bothering to be distant, because unfortunately he cares about how this turns out.
What we also see is that working and poor people are just as obsessed with legacy and tradition as rich people, even if it plays out in a different key. You have to get up and do a shitty job in a shitty place every day, then the romance is all you have. I know this because as an artist my legacy and tradition is people I’m not related to and never met.
Biggest Laugh: “Yeah, I called you a few times, you didn’t answer, so I tracked your phone. Not like landing on the moon.”
Biggest Non-Art Laugh: The guy getting on Raylan and Art about not wearing a helmet is so funny. “I guess you guys should know about obeyin’ the law, then.” TV cops trying to throw their authority around in petty ways is so annoying to me.
Top Ownage: “I think you broke my arm!” Would also like to draw attention to the weak ownage of Cooper attacking Raylan just to feel powerful for a moment.
Last Embrace – Secret agent Roy Scheider, still reeling from his wife’s death (she died because he let her come with him on a mission), is coincidentally sucked into a revenge scheme against the descendants of the men who ran a chain of Jewish-owns whorehouses. Young Jonathan Demme is channeling either Hitchcock or DePalma, ultimately lifting a lot of scenes from the former but the overall tawdriness of the latter. There’s not a lot of Demme’s usual style and none of his humanism, but every so often we see glimpse of how we would use NYC as a backdrop in Married to the Mob and Something Wild. Scheider brings his usual charm though struggles to depict the character’s mental anguish, and Sam Levene has a lot of fun as someone sent by a Jewish “committee” to help Roy. Look for early Christopher Walken as Roy’s boss and early John Glover as a professor of Hebraic Studies.
The Practice, “The Spirit of America” – A change of pace as this one has a documentary crew following Donnell and Associates to Virginia as the last hope for a man on death row. The cinema verite approach is generally effective, and lets Jimmy, Ellenor, and Eugene talk right to the camera about their attitudes about the death penalty. The story itself definitely leans against the death penalty by humanizing the accused but also has the family of the victim say to the camera “stop humanizing a killer.” What is more firmly the view of the writers is that the accused – and many in real life – don’t get fair trials. PS: the accused is executed even though there is evidence he was screwed. Clearly, reality was the guide to the outcome.
Frasier, “Dial M for Martin” – Niles agrees to take in Martin for a while since Martin and Frasier are getting on each other’s nerves while Frasier is out of work. Only Niles really agrees only so that Daphne moves in too, but if Martin can handle the stairs in Niles’s duplex, Daphne has no reason to stay to help Martin. Of course, before long it seems Niles’s subconscious is making sure Martin keeps getting hurt. And poor Frasier, who just wanted his apartment to himself for a date with an underwear model, loses his date and his peace. This would have been better if it didn’t turn “Frasier and Martin need some time apart” into “Frasier finally has paradise.” And once again, we need to point out that even if Frasier’s dates go awry, he keeps getting dates with models. Best line: Roz realizing that Martin once had both Maris and Lilith as daughters-in-law.
Ooh we’re stuck in italics.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “Don’t Come Back Alive” – not without its charms, but I found this one a bit of a disappointment. The central premise just seemed a little ridiculous and the way things played out didn’t really win me over, although there are some high points like the melancholy missed Christmas date and the insurance guy’s general vibe.
Death Valley – decided to finish off this cosy-crime miniseries that I gave some faint praise a while back. It’s definitely a weaker example of the genre than the others I’ve dipped into recently, the murder plots and character dynamics fall short of High Potential and especially Ludwig. But it was fine, and Timothy Spall remained fun throughout.
I know it’s partly down to the episode’s length, but the speed-run aspect of “Don’t Come Back Alive” always amuses me. A lot of people can’t commit to dinner plans as quickly as this guy commits to faking his wife’s death. But yeah, this is a weaker one, and your high points are my high points too.
Your write-up made me appreciate it a little more, it’s definitely an ambitious story to attempt to tell in such a short time but unfortunately that does lead to some bizarre jumps of logic.
China Moon – Got into the Criterion Miami Noir category and realized I was only two films away from completion. Wasn’t in the mood to attempt a Larry Clark, so I gave this one a whirl despite Dave‘s warnings, and his analysis is pretty accurate. A strangely inert film for a lot of its runtime, it’s basically redoing Body Heat but playing it as if everybody is waiting around for Body Heat to happen on its own rather than taking that movie’s simmering urgency. Doesn’t help that Harris is not a natural at coaxing chemistry from his co-stars and Stowe is not particularly natural at anything in this movie except looking good. Still, got a bit wrapped in ye olde willegetawaywidit (h/t Burgundy Suit for the whodunnit alternative name), which is the baseline you’d ask from this movie. Plus baby-faced Benicio del Toro! I wouldn’t still be sore over losing my five dollars on a ticket in 1994.
The “willegetawaywidit” is a great concept, part of what hurts China Moon is how I was rooting for a different person to get away with a different thing than the movie wants.
No clue what’s going on with the italics.
Marriage Story
Casually strolling up to a contemporary classic a couple years after its release, and you know, it’s good. I dock it half a star for the writing of the kid character and for Laura Dern’s monologue about fathers v. mothers, which feels painfully intro-level for a conversation between two smart adult women in 2019–and also like Dern’s character is performing it for the audience rather than her client–but the reason that’s notable is because it sticks out like a sore thumb in a movie that otherwise has great control over its tone and level of reality, easily dipping in and out of naturalism, family melodrama, comedy, etc. Incredible performances here, with a career-best performance from Johansson (and maybe one from Driver as well, but as much as I love him, I’ve got some blind spots in his filmography that I need to check out). Dern and Liotta are also great, two cutthroat attorneys with two different approaches–Dern calibrating her personal interactions with her client much better, and much more warmly; Liotta gleefully coming out with aggressive intensity everywhere–but my personal highlight was, unsurprisingly, Alan Alda’s fundamentally decent family lawyer, who has a comedic appreciation for the brutal absurdities of the system but a desire to keep people from being chewed up by it.
Tons of well-observed moments, and this actually feels like it helped pave the way for Anatomy of a Fall in its look at what happens when ordinary human behavior in a marriage gone bad gets dragged into court, anatomized, and painted in the worst possible light.
This is the only Baumbach film I haven’t seen but I keep dragging my heels on doing so for various reasons (Netflix, length, suggestion that it might mostly be people yelling at each other). That cast is so good though, and the suggestion of top-tier performances might get me a little closer to finally checking it out…
There’s actually less yelling than the internet had led me to believe! Certainly not a non-zero amount of yelling, but it’s not wall-to-wall anguished arguments, thankfully.
The one thing that struck me about Dern’s speech was beginning a sentence with “our whole Judeo-Christian whatever” and ending it with the Virgin Mary, who, uh, I don’t think is especially important to Judaism
Babylon 5 – everyone wants to RETVRN to the days of filler episodes but the dark side of that is a piece of shit like this. The sci-fi conceit it explores is fine but the execution is lacking, especially acting-wise, and much worse is how this is designed as a showcase for Jason Brian Cole’s “cool” “dashing” Andor-as-Poochie ass Marcus. The gulf between how Cole and Strasynci see the character and how he actually is is vaster than galaxies, the dude fucking sucks and the whole episode is reminiscent of that terrible Helo-centric Battlestar episode from back in the day. Bah!
Scarecrow – Gene Hackman and Al Pacino on the road! As *checks notes* people on the edge of society in a naturally lit 70s movie where the vistas provide ironic counterpoint to the characters’ limited horizons? Look out, boys! This hits some familiar notes but on the other hand those notes are hard to hear these days, a lengthy drunken bar scene is great. The end is a bit of a forced downer but the final scene is handled well. Pacino is so young and pretty here, occasionally Hoffmanny in energy but a charming innocent, at least until he runs into an also-young but even then unsettling Richard Lynch in prison. Hackman of course looks like Hackman, eternally 45, and if he is in many ways not as mature as Pacino he can still learn a thing or two while remaining believably his blustery self. On Criterion for two more days.
Wow, at least on my monitor, Tristan emphasized his words so hard it turned everybody’s replies into italics.
Not just you! I’m even seeing italics in the reply box!
And our names are italicized, too!
I wasn’t typing in italics on my earlier comment, but I am now.
Everything’s being said with unnecessary urgency, like we’re in a Mission: Impossible movie.
Maybe the real rabbit’s foot was the emphasis we made along the way?
“This is a movie that feels like a novel, where the horror is most present not in incident but in a breakdown of the characters’ subjective experience. Prose is perspective, and this is an estranging of perspective.”
Love this, and it’s helping define my long-simmering anti-first-person beef – that is so often an assumed aligning of perspective, limiting on multiple fronts.
Thank you! And while I’m still a first-person defender, I do think that is definitely the failure mode of it. (First-person used for stylistic verve or to heighten an unreliable narrator’s effect, however, will usually win my love.)
Year of the Month update!
This August, we’ll be covering 1959. Check out all these movies, albums, books, et al
Aug. 8th: Gillian Nelson: Noah’s Ark
Aug. 15th: Gillian Nelson: I Captured the King of the Leprechauns
Aug. 18th: Sam Scott: Imitation of Life
Aug. 2oth: John Bruni: Shadows
Aug. 22nd: Gillian Nelson: Khrushchev Goes to Disneyland
Aug. 29th: Gillian Nelson: The Monorail
Aug. 31st: Tristan J. Nankervis: North by Northwest
And in September, we’re covering these movies, albums, books, from 1938!
TBD: Cori Domschot: Bringing Up Baby
TBD: Bridgett Taylor: Rebecca
Sept. 22nd: Sam Scott: Holiday
This sounds very interesting – and just from you mentioning the detail of the guy throwing his lit cigarette from the car, my blood is up and I want vengeance. And then the lady wantonly smashes an eagle egg? No punishment is too great!!
It’s really interesting viewing if you’re in the mood for a more contemplative kind of horror. And yeah, that casual accidental fire-starting is a great/terrible establishing character moment: these people just have no care for the world around them at all.
EDIT: The half-chopped trees are the thing that most make me want this guy to die, for some reason. It’s so pointlessly awful!