Hunters On A White Field (2024 film)

Category: psychological horror, book-to-movie adaptation

Directed by: Sarah Gyllenstierna

 

Original Swedish title: Jakt ('The Hunt')

 

Reminds me of: Wake In Fright and Deliverance.

 

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There's just something about European cinema. They don't pull punches like American/Australian cinema does. Maybe that's why SBS was known as the European porn channel for a long time. European porn. And the Tour de France.

Because European cinema is just...different.

 

So when a movie called Hunters On A White Field came up on my SBS streaming app, I thought, why not give it a go. Besides, non-English cinema really has brought up some gems.

 

The plot:

 

Two friends/colleagues, Greger and Alex (Magnus Krepper and Ardalan Esmaili) go to the forest house of Henrik (Jens Hulten) for week of hunting. It is clear Greger and Henrik have been hunting together for a very long time, whereas this is Alex's first time.

 

This will also be the last time they can hunt at this particular location as Henrik's in-laws are selling the property.

 

Alex is out of his depth handling weapons and understanding the psychology behind hunting, which Greger and Henrik especially seem to be really in to ( I mean, like REALLY in to).

 

They first go off duck hunting and Alex manages to kill one bird, but feeling guilty, drops the carcass back in the lake before everyone goes back to the forest cabin to cook and eat what they have killed.

 

The next day, they decide to go hunting for deer. Greger manages to shoot and kill one, then Alex does as well. Feeling frustrated that he hasn't killed anything yet, Henrik goes back out into the woods where he wounds a deer, but hesitates to kill it. Alex, unable to bear the suffering of the animal, shoots the animal dead, offending Henrik.

 

The next day, after they have made a meal out of their kills, the three head out into the forest, but find that there are no animals around. No animals, no sounds, no droppings. The three men decide that they will then hunt each other, since there are no animals around and the men need to hunt. They are given five rounds each, and must start the competition by firing off one round to indicate their location.

 

Throughout the hunt, we follow Alex who gets Greger in his sights, but while he is doing that, he gets tracked down himself by Henrik and they all come to a stalemate. The next round begins, but this time, Greger is shot by Henrik.

 

Greger is taken back to the cabin to receive medical treatment, and the next day, he is told to stay home and rest, but participates anyway. The round ends when Henrik is shot by Greger.

 

Alex and Greger take Henrik's corpse back to the cabin while they recover.

 

On the last day, Greger and Alex hunt each other. Alex manages to get the better of Greger, then brings his body back.

 

Back at the cabin, from afar, he sees a cleaner version of himself enter the cabin that looks to be before any hunting has started.

 

Alex digs a massive hole to put the bodies in, but has difficulty getting out. After a few unsuccessful attempts to escape the (somehow) massive hole he dug by hand, he hears moose calling and birds singing.

 

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What did I just watch?

 

That was my first reaction.

 

It's also veeeeery slow. The movie goes for about 1 hour 40 minutes, and a lot of that is silence and people eating things.

  

I'd recommend if you like this slow-burn type of film. That's not to say I hated it – there were definitely things I liked – but because it's hard to definitively pin down what this all meant when we take into account the last scene where Alex sees himself walk in to the house, and then the hole he dug that was so big he can't get out of.

 

Not a bad movie, but it's really just an arthouse movie that is really well shot and produced.

The movie has some good beats – ESPECIALLY the idea of the outside not understanding what he's walked into and feeling menaced by the established participants – but the slow pace gives the movie a head wound and the deliberately ambiguous ending kills it off.

 

STAR RATING: 2/5

Seven Snipers (2026 film)

Category: Australian action siege drama.
 
Directed by: Sandra Sciberras
 
Reminds me of: Shooter mixed with Run, Hide, Fight set on a farm.
 
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I was bored. I jumped on Netflix. This was #2 in movies on the day. It was only 90 minutes.
 
And an Australian action movie can't be too bad, right? I mean, we've produced the Max Max series, Tomorrow, When The War Began, and Wyrmwood: Road Of The Dead, so this should be a decent flick, right?
 
So with that, I'll bring you a recap and my thoughts on the 2026 Australian action film, Seven Snipers, starring Radha Mitchell and Tim Roth.
 
The plot:
 
Kris Hendricks (Mitchell) lives on a rural property in an unspecified state of Australia (but one clue points to it being Queensland, where the movie was filmed) with her fifteen year old daughter Anja (Annabel Wolfe) who, on this particular day, is practicing her archery. After a terse coaching session with mum, Anja jumps on a motorcycle with Michael (Lee Tiger Halley) to go to school.

Rambo: First Blood (1982 film)

Category: Action

Directed by: Ted Kotcheff

Reminds me of: The Fugitive

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The film that put helped cement Sylvester Stallone as a bona-fide movie star. Stallone was already known to audiences via the Rocky movie series - by the time Rambo came out in 1982, the Rocky franchise was three movies deep, thus proving his dramatic prowess - but could he bring the broken combat veteran from David Morrell's 1972 novel to life in an action extravaganza?

And I didn't actually know it at the time, but Rambo: First Blood is actually a book-to-movie adaptation from the David Morell novel First Blood. Don't say you don't learn anything from reading this movie review blog!

Plot:

The film opens with John Rambo (Stallone) walking up to a housing area by a lake, asking the locals for the whereabouts of an old army buddy from his time in Vietnam. Rambo is then informed that said friend had died some time ago from health issues related to the army's use of Agent Orange.

Dear You (2026 film)

Category: Historic foreign-language drama

Original Chinese title: Love Letters To Grandma

Directed by: Lan Hongchun

Similar to: How To Make Millions Before Grandma Dies

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Yet another addition to the collection of Asian films I have watched because of a viral Instagram campaign. Some of my friends and family wanted to see this because they saw the Instagram clips of people walking out of this movie crying and thought "this must be good!".

Me, I still have the slightly bad taste left in my mouth by Sunshine Women's Choir, so I was admittedly quite hesitant, especially when I saw the people crying part - but I promised Mrs Damo that I'd sit and watch this with an open mind.

One of the unique aspects of the film is that it is entirely in the Chinese dialect of Teo Chew - a rarity, and gives me reason to explain Chinese names and language and culture to my readers. China is not one homogenous group of people. It has a national language (Mandarin) that is spoken by pretty much everyone - and especially when you get to government-level positions – but then there are regional dialects native to whatever region of China you happen to be in. For example, if you are in Guangdong, you will hear Cantonese being spoken a lot. In Fujian or Taiwan, you will hear Hokkien, and then you can also have city-level dialects as well - a lot of people I know speak Shanghainese which is a separate language all its own (though related to Mandarin). And in a particular region of the densely populated Eastern region of China named Chaoshan, you get Teo Chew (or sometimes stylised as Teochew).

So to a very large extent, you can actually tell where a person's family or ancestors are from by the dialect they speak at home and/or the phonetics of their surname. The western equivalent would like if you're a red-headed kid surnamed Kernaghan - three guesses as to where your parents are from.

But why the viral marketing campaign? In a surprise twist, this movie is actually targeted to the elderly generation, and particularly the generation of Chinese whose parents left China post-WW2 to build a new life.

But forget viral marketing campaigns - does this movie do enough to earn a prestigious Damo Reviews Movies recommendation?

The plot:

Hiao Ui (Zheng Runqi), a young man living in the Shan Tou region of China (one of the eastern coastal areas) has fallen afoul of loan sharks and needs to find money quick while promising he'll have the money by next week. Conspiring with his uncle Zheng Chulong (Zheng Pengsheng), Hiao Ui gets the idea of going to Thailand to either find his rich grandfather or retroactively try to claim a piece of the inheritance (not sure how far that story would get him, but points for trying) because it turns out that the grandfather, Bak Seng (Wang Yantong), has numerous schools named after him in Thailand. He must be wealthy, right?

1 Brother, 7 Siblings (2025 film)

Category: Foreign language drama

Original Indonesian Title: 1 Kakak 7 Ponakan

Directed by: Yandy Laurens

Reminded me of: Wonder

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"Damo, Damo, you have to watch this - I heard it's really good!" said Mrs. Damo, right after Mr. Damo recovered from watching Siksa Kubur. And as soon as it started, Damo realised that he and Mrs. Damo have a VERY different taste in movies.

Apparently, this movie is an adaptation of a Sinetron titled (in English) "A Sister & Seven Siblings" from the 1990s, just with a gender-swap.

The plot:

The movie starts off with Moko (Chicco Kurniawan) who moves in with his heavily pregnant older sister and her husband, Agnes and Atmo (Maudy Koesnaedi and Kiki Narendra) to prepare for his thesis defence and graduation to a Masters program in architecture. Agnes and Atmo live with Woko (Fatih Unru), Nina (Freya Jayawardana, credited here as Freya JKT48) and Ano (Ahmad Nadif) who is Atmo's nephew.

Grave Torture (2024 film)

Category: Foreign language - supernatural horror

Original title: Siksa Kubur (Indonesian for 'grave torture')

Directed by: Joko Anwar

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So recently, it was a public holiday where I am in Australia. As a film buff, I decided to whip out the ol' Netflix and see what was available. A film called Grave Torture sounds kinda interesting - supernatural splatter horror, and with an R18+ rating. This better hit hard because anything with an R18+ rating isn't (and shouldn't be) a walk in the park!

And I can only hope it will be better in terms of Indonesian horror than Guna Guna Istri Muda, which in reality isn't a high bar to clear.

The plot:

The movie begins with siblings Sita and Adil (Widuri Puteri and Muzakki Ramdhan) working at their parents bakery. Their parent's (played by Fachri Albar and Happy Salma) are kindly people, but business is struggling. While standing behind the counter, Adil catches the attention of a man with a serious look on his face and wearing headphones. The man walks in, hands Adil a casette tape, talks about fighting the enemies of Allah and warns him to not go outside. Sita attempts to prevent a theft of cash from the till with the parents confronting the thief outside, but they all fall victim to the man Adil encountered before who turns out to be a suicide bomber.

A Quiet Place: Day One (2022 film)

Category: Creature horror

Directed by: Michael Sarnoski

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One of the most famous quotes ever to come from the pen of English essayist Samuel Johnson was that "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel". The quote is not actually about patriotism itself, but critiques the insincere use of patriotism and how some individuals exploit the concept of patriotism for self-serving purposes. And if I may bastardise the quote for second, Damo the middle-aged movie reviewer thus states "prequels are the last refuge of creatively-bankrupt movie studios - who may or may not be scoundrels".

And I start off with this because the first "A Quiet Place" movie was a surprise smash hit - a surprise smash hit to the point that Paramount Pictures decided to do Paramount Pictures things and pump out a sequel. I haven't seen the sequel, but I get the impressions it didn't quite hit the same creative and box office heights as the first. And so we are faced with the age old question - what do you do when you can't advance a story further, but want to milk more out your IP? The answer - you run it back to the beginning.

So now we have "A Quiet Place: Day One", chronicling the very beginning of the monster invasion of Earth (which takes place in New York, because of course).

The plot:

Lupita Nyongo plays Sam, a woman dying from cancer and living out her days at a hospice in upstate New York, alongside her cat Frodo who keeps her company. Sam reluctantly agrees to go on an day trip to a New York City theatre (on the promise of pizza afterwards) for a marionette puppet show. Sam sneaks out for a quick bit of personal shopping then back to the theatre right at the end, and right when she thinks its pizza time, we see meteors flash across the sky and the patients are ordered back on the bus to evacuate and head back to the hospice.