Charlie's Farm takes place in Australia. The film follows American Natasha (Tara Reid) and her three Australian friends as they head out to a remote farm deep in the Australian countryside that's rumored to be haunted. Years ago, apparently, the residents of the said farm victimized the odd backpacker passing through, and this led to the townspeople taking justice into their own hands. In spite of numerous warnings from practically everyone they run into, the friends still decide to camp out at the abandoned farm. And soon enough, they discover that something dangerous still lurks in those lands.
This is a movie that seems to have built backwards from its deaths. Each death in this movie features a fairly impressive bit of practical special effects, the characters generally meeting a violent end that involves some body parts being torn off. The rest of the picture hardly matters. The characters are unlikeable and inconsequential. They are simply there to be vessels for the grisly bits. The plot is a contrivance that shepherds these poor, soulless automatons to their violent deaths. The movie doesn't offer anything of value in the bits leading up to the gory sequences, making the whole exercise a real test of patients center.
The characters are in fact, so inconsequential that a couple of them are actually introduced in the middle of the movie. They really just arrive because the movie needed more warm bodies for the mayhem to come. They do not get any distinct traits, or any sort of narrative arc. Amazingly, they are only slightly less developed than the four main characters, who are mainly defined by their utter stupidity and general awfulness. The film seems to go out of its way to make these characters unworthy of any salvation. The very reason they're at the farm is because they're too stupid to heed the multiple warnings they receive from the townspeople.
To be completely fair to these moronic protagonists, the whole thing doesn't make a lot of sense anyway. Apparently these townspeople are wary of something killing off backpackers in the vicinity of the farm, but aren't really doing anything about it. It doesn’t make sense that all those years ago, those townspeople didn’t let the authorities handle the situation. The film halfheartedly throws out a series of justifications for why so little is being done, but it clearly doesn’t care about making this thing feel remotely plausible.
The direction is pretty limp until the movie gets to the killing, and that takes a good long while. And even then, there still some weird quirks that get in the way of the clarity of the scene. The film’s only asset is really just the practical special effects. It gains nothing from the actors. Its lead star is Tara Reid, who has just never been good. She looks pretty disinterested throughout the entire film. Nathan Jones might be the best actor in the film, and that’s mainly because he’s just there to be really big.
Charlie’s Farm should have just been a special effects demo reel. The scant few minutes of people being mutilated and killed are the only points in the film that received any real love. The rest of the movie is treated like a sad obligation. They’ve got to get the characters to the farm somehow. They’ve got to be dumb enough to ignore all warnings and not be discouraged at any point in this stupid journey. And their getting there has to take up eighty minutes of movie, so that it counts as feature length. Charlie’s Farm does have decent stuff at the end, but that trip just isn’t worth it.
My Rating:
