The Marshes - Vague and Cryptic and One Hell of a Good Time!
Critics, bleh! I’m not a big fan of critics, especially this new wave of social media, internet critics as they just seem mean with most of their reviews of films. Often times reading a review you walk away knowing nothing about the movie except flaws. Poor lighting, lack of character development, inconsistent thematic story evolution.
WHAT. ABOUT. THE. MOVIE!
Did the killer have the ability to warp space and time? Was he a cannibal? Did he have a supernatural ability to move between various alternative dimensions? Did he hang men from trees and rip out their intestines while they shrieked in agony and ate their entrails? Huh?
These are things that I could have read about the newest Shudder Exclusive The Marshes but instead, I got ramblings about the nature of science vs folklore, review upon review about not understanding the story or the film not explaining what was going on. Use your imagination friends to fill in the blanks, trust me your own mind can be a much scarier place than you know.
I’ve mentioned before that a big reason I am much more of a fan of older films is because they give the viewer the ability to fill in the blanks and help build the story with the director. They didn't need this monologue at the beginning of the 3rd act to explain the motivations behind each and every character, unraveling the plot in front of you. Instead they kept it vague, kept the details that the creative person who made the film wanted to keep and left the rest for the viewers interpretation. The Marshes in this way is a throwback.
The story follows 3 science researchers going out to the Australian marshes to look at bugs or something. After they stumble into some unsavory characters like a shitty dude at a gas station and a couple of poachers they start to have bizarre disturbances at their camp. Are these disturbances the Australian hillbillies messing with the city slickers? Or is it the The Swagman, a murderer of the marshes, the Australian cropsey killer of folklore? Or is it possibly all in the head of the main character Priya?
Perhaps this is what set so many reviewers of the film off. You don’t really ever know. Well, that’s unfair, you know it’s not the hillbillies because the slasher has the ability to mess with time and space kills one of them by stringing him up by the Achilles heel and ripping out their entrails. Another he makes disappear into thin air, or did he? You see the main character keeps having these weird mental breaks where she grabs her head and shakes violently. During one of these “episodes” she imagines the creepy killer cutting open her tent only to awaken and find that this is not true. The same reality bending hallucination happens right as she is being hunted by the killer timelord and when the mental break ends, the hillbilly has disappeared. VANISHED.
As the movie progresses they never really explain what these mini mental breaks are. She just continues to have them. They also don't really explain if the killer has some super powers, although he certainly appears to as he randomly pops up right behind his victims when they are least expecting it and the titular marshes have an In the Tall Grass like quality to them where they are essentially a maze. Is it the rural setting that is confusing and easy to get lost in? Is the slasher manipulating the area around him to make it like one of Bowser’s castles, where if you don't take the right tube you end up back where you started? Or is it just a figment of Priya’s imagination?
It would be cliche to say, “Perhaps we’ll never know” but I know, I used my imagination and it’s clear to me that this whistling killer has some sort of control over the environment where he can work outside of the bounds of traditional physics, overcoming the laughable human “laws” of space-time. You see in my imagination, the killer is from another dimension which is how he has these powers in this dimension. He came here to feast upon the organs of humans which fuel him and give him powers. His abilities that impact reality are so strong, so strong that even when Priya thinks she is escaped and saved by the police, this is just a figment of her imagination and the killer drags her back into the marshes leaving her screaming as the credits begin to roll. Instead of making some negative ass review because the film didn’t explain, I made my own explanation and it makes it so much better.
The Marshes is a fantastic entry to Shudder’s growing library of exclusive and an impressive outing for everyone involved. This is the first feature length film for director Roger Scott as well as actors Dafna Kronental, Sam Delich and Mathew Cooper who take up all of the screen time being hunted by The Swagman. As a standalone film, I’ll give it a 3 out of 5 which in my book means, “It was good and I will watch it again” considering this is the first anything for everyone associated with the film, I give it a 5 and will be looking forward to what comes next.
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