This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Went to watch a movie with my mrs and as you do look for hours to find a good one except this was a complete scheissehouse of a thing..... whole movie would of been 10mins long without all the walking and boring campfire and walk scenes.... half the story was accurate to the real thing and a lot missed out........ WOULD DEFINITELY NOT RECOMMEND!!!!!!!!!

The actual events of what happened after Alexander Pearce's first escape from the prison colony in Tasmania, according to Pearce himself, are shown in this movie. It's probably somewhat too slow-moving for some young viewers, but I was impressed by how realistic it is. The characters are believable. The direction is meticulous. The acting is excellent, in many situations an actor's expression reveals feelings of uncertainty, confusion, guilt, fear, horror or misery. The cinematography showing the Tasmanian wilderness is visually splendid.Do not expect a typical slasher/horror film, this movie is much more intelligently written and directed. The film's intention is to tell a story, rather than to frighten.

Although it felt like a rewarding experience, Van Diemen's Land is not what you would call an easy watch. The viewer is transported back a couple of centuries, and plunged into the harsh and untamed Tasmanian landscape, for a fairly straightforward tale of man v man v the environment.Despite its' simplicity, it's an affecting tale, helped by the sparse, evocative and apologetic "I'm a quiet man" voice-over that threads its way through the narrative, holding together the otherwise un-holdable. It's very much 'in-your-face' as there's little historical explanation, and only the vaguest sense of any future ahead, which compels you to focus on the here-and-now. The score is haunting, and the film is beautifully shot, with bleached-out greens emphasizing the unforgiving nature of their surroundings and predicament.The trailer gives a good indication of what to expect, including two of the more iconic sequences that stayed with me long afterwards – one scene where the group are running time-lapsed and ghost-like through the forest trying to escape their pursuers, the other the shockingly swift brutality with which the second inmate on the menu meets his maker. Elsewhere, we experience the messy and protracted depiction of how hard it is to kill a man, and as the numbers dwindle whilst the tension and paranoia mounts, individual camp fires become the order of the night, as the lengths men would go to survive become increasingly desperate.On the downside, I struggled to hear some of the heavily-accented dialogue (especially when the speaker was off screen), and it was hard to believe that there were no other nutritious animals in a rainforest, bar a solitary snake. Given their limited resources, quite how they would have caught them is another matter, but they'd have sure as hell tried, to save from eating each other.I came out feeling like I'd been badly mauled after 12 rounds in a ring with an enormous and unbeatable foe. It's a real powerhouse of a film that I would most certainly recommend, even though one viewing is quite sufficient for me in this lifetime. 7/10.

Just saw this brilliant, grim little piece of Australian Gothic the other day as part of the 12 Perth Annual Revelation Film Festival here in West Australia.As a Forensic scientist and a horror movie buff I have both a professional and personal curiosity regarding cases of anthrophagy/cannibalism, and the Pearce case is a fascinating one- clearly the Australian public/movie industry think so too- there are currently three films and a book about Pearse, all released within the past few years. Auf Der Heide has crafted the best of all the Pearse projects- stark and uncompromising, the film doesn't shy away from the brutal fates the eight convicts escaping into the Tasmanian outback suffered- the men butchered for meat don't die quick and easy, as in many a Hollywood film. Nor is the film a gratuitous, relentlessly grim affair- there are moments of eerie, quiet beauty- a soon-to-be-victim kneeling and waiting for the axe, stares up and out at the thick, green beauty of the rain forest around him; a sequence filmed on a hillside drenched in torrential rain, and Pearse's Gothic, Gaelic-language narration: "I have looked up at God looking down; he dances with an axe in his hand..." Brilliant film- beautifully directed, filmed and acted- with Mark Leonard Winter, in particular, a real stand-out as Dalton.