The Pack (2016)

“The first true contender for worst film of the year”

Oh dear.

Oh dear oh dear.

         Where do I start?

How about with what THE PACK is not. This release from Arrow Films should not be confused with THE PACK (1977) which features Joe Don Baker versus an island full of crazed dogs. That one’s quite good in a sub-SAVAGE BEES kind of way. Neither should it be confused with THE PACK (2010), a Franco-Belgian effort about cannibals. No. In the future, to distinguish it from those other films this THE PACK will most likely be described as ‘that badly written, badly directed piece of crap with completely unsympathetic characters and virtually no dog action despite the lengths the film-makers apparently went to as described in the ‘Making Of’ in the special features'.

Yes, THE PACK is rubbish - a cheap and completely unrewarding waste of time. You might think Australia is the country of PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK and MAD MAX FURY ROAD but it's just as capable of producing appallingly low-rent stuff like this as anywhere else.

If you watch THE PACK you will be able to act this scene better. 

The plot (should anyone still be reading) is as follows: the utterly crap Wilson family are up to their necks in debt and the bank is about to foreclose on their massive farm. Farmer Adam Wilson (Jack Campbell) refuses to leave, putting his huge losses down to all the sheep with their insides torn out that he has found dead in his fields for the past few weeks but appears to have done nothing about. His equally hopeless wife Carla (Anna Lise Phillips) has decided to set up shop as a vet in their isolated region that boasts as her patients one small puppy and a cat she’s keeping in an enormous cage. The rest of the family is made up of a little boy and the usual cliched, whiny “I’m nearly 18” daughter who is there just to get on everyone’s nerves, get into trouble, and have a shower involving no nudity at all. (That last bit for our more 'sophisticated' readers).

For some reason known to nobody, and especially not the writer of this lazy, audience-disdaining stuff, a small pack of not very threatening-looking black dogs with no sense of smell attack their farmhouse, leading to a ‘night of terror’ during which the Wilson family must fight for their lives and sadly win. Then there’s an ending that is so not an ending it’s probably possible to sue it under the Trades Descriptions Act.

THE PACK is truly terrible, an example of cynical modern-day low-budget moviemaking at its worst. The script is perfunctory, assuming audiences for horror will put up with any old shit and certainly the bare less-than-minimum we get here.  We don’t care about the characters because we are given no reason to. The direction consists of the ‘waving the camera around frenziedly during infrequent animal attacks’ school that makes for poor suspense but massive savings on a budget that was probably spent on the wrap party instead. I feel sorry for the actors, who seem competent but will probably never work again after this. Everything about this film is as stupid as the family we’re supposed to be rooting for and the piss-poor pack of “wild dogs” who can’t even smell when their prey is half a foot away.

I really hated THE PACK. Can you tell?

THE PACK is out from Arrow Films on DVD on 

Monday 7th March