The Weekend Australian
June 2008
"Rogue" DVD Review
By Michael Bodey
Transcript by AussieCIFan59 at IMDb.
AUSTRALIAN thriller Rogue has had a rocky, short life. Greg Mclean's tale of a violent croc picking off a bevy of stranded tourists is impeccably made but little seen. After Mclean's breakthrough debut, Wolf Creek, it deserved more.
The director concedes he would have liked the film to earn another $3 million at the Australian box office last year, but it ended 2007 as the third highest-grossing Australian film of the year, behind Happy Feet and Romulus, My Father, with $1.7 million.
"We didn't make a sh.tload of money in Australia but, critically, for a film like this which would usually get smashed, we did quite well," he says.
"It's tricky in trying to pinpoint why it didn't catch on. Maybe it was marketing, maybe it was the film itself."
The film's North American release sticks in his craw though. After generating much heat in the online film fan environment, the film's US studio, the Weinstein Company, vacillated and gave it only a limited theatrical release last month. It sank rapidly.
"You can sense a little pissed-offedness with the Weinsteins among fans for tantalising them with the movie and then pulling it back," Mclean says.
Even worse, the Weinsteins changed the promotional poster Mclean and his team devised for the US release to something more, well, let's just say obvious, than the previous riff on the Jaws classic.
"Personally, I think the one they're using in the US is crap. I told the Weinsteins and they said, 'Great, you make the movie and we'll sell it'," Mclean sighs. "Unfortunately, I'm not one of those directors who gets to veto those things."
The film, starring Radha Mitchell, Alias's Michael Vartan and Sam Worthington, is entering its second life, a life on DVD that I'm guessing will be far more fruitful.
First, Rogue is a technically proficient and engaging, if not quite scary enough, horror film. For that reason alone it will find a DVD audience. Second, genre films tend to come into their own on DVD. Wolf Creek, for instance, is still churning away.
"Yes, it's something I'm aware of and excited about," Mclean says of its DVD prospects. "I'm imagining it will do well, and I just hope this really catches on because there's a number of levels on which audiences can get into this movie in Australia, particularly on the DVD.
"The DVD is cool: because we've had so much time on our hands, we've spent a lot of time making an hour-long 'making of', and a number of mini-documentaries on the orchestral score, the making of the crocodile and the Northern Territory.
"We shot an enormous amount of footage up there that we couldn't fit on the film." That might reek of indulgence, but Mclean and his team are of the generation that has grown up on films on VHS and DVD. They're enthusiasts about the process and willing to impart information.
And Mclean is also one of the better directors of horror, a genre that fans just can't discuss enough. But is he wary of confining himself to genre pictures, an area this country is not particularly assured at making or selling?
"No, not really," he says. "Films are singular entities that succeed largely on how aggressively they're sold. I think you can actually make an audience see anything, and we could have been more aggressive with the Rogue campaign."
But that's water under the tourist boat. Rogue should fly on DVD.
© 2008 News Limited
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