Wild Country (2005, R)

 

Let’s put it this way:  Wild Country is less than 75 minutes long.  Have you ever seen such a short feature-length film that was actually good (barring stop-motion features)?  I’ve a sneaking suspicion that this may have been one of those pre-Thick of It projects that made PC consider giving up acting.

 

To be honest, the plot itself isn’t horrific or anything – it’s your basic middling “attractive ensemble gets chased by monster and picked off one by one” movie.  In this case, it’s a bunch of Scottish teens on a countryside camping trip, and they’re menaced by a non-specified wolf-boar-rat thing.  The scenery is lovely and the lead performers are pretty much what you’d expect for this sort of film.  No, the problem is the horrendously fake-looking animatronic wolf-boar-rat thing, and gratuitous amounts of fake-looking gore.  Seriously:  the creature effects and violence in this thing make The Lair of the White Worm look subtle and sophisticated.

 

PC, as Father Steve, only has a small role.  He’s the priest in charge of the youth club that goes on the camping trip, though he himself doesn’t participate.  He seems like a flawed but basically decent guy – joking around with the kids, telling them scary stories – but there is the small matter of unwittingly leaving them to be eaten by a wolf-boar-rat thing.  If you’re in charge of a youth club, I have to think that not leaving them to be eaten is rule one.

 

If we’re talking about PC horror roles, I’d easily rank Max in House of 9 and Angus in The Lair of the White Worm above this one.  He doesn’t have very much screentime, and even when he is around, he doesn’t have a lot to do.  PC does what he can, but there just isn’t much to say about Father Steve.

 

This film features Martin Compston, Jed in Niceland, as one of the leads.  He and PC don’t have any scenes together, though, since his character doesn’t ride out to the countryside with the others.  This would’ve been just a year since they worked together – wonder if they hung out between takes talking about how much they’d rather be back in Iceland.

 

Accent Watch

 

It’s pretty much all Scottish all the time in this film, and PC is no exception.

 

Recommend?

 

In General – No.

 

PC-wise – Not necessarily.  Not much screentime, not much material.

 

Warnings

 

Tons of gore (guts, spurting blood, the whole shebang,) along with swearing and sexual content (including a glimpse of a naked bottom.)