"Dust Devil is one of the only 90's horror classics!" "The special edition DVD from Subversive Cinema is finally a release worthy of this film". "If you haven't seen Dust Devil yet, you're in for a brilliant and refreshing horror surprise". Okay, these are some of the ultimately praising comments I encountered on "Dust Devil" and apparently a lot of people are astonished if you claim you're a horror fanatic and yet haven't seen this film. Now, after borrowing the deluxe DVD-edition from a friend and finally having seen the film, all I can say is
Is that it?!? This is the supposedly brilliant and original 90's classic that I desperately had to watch in order to keep calling myself a horror buff? I mean, it's a respectable and ambitious film and definitely benefices from a handful of unique elements, but I honestly expected more in terms of plot originality and production values. "Dust Devil" boosts an incredibly rudimentary and hugely derivative plot, but writer/director Richard Stanley ("Hardware") effectively camouflages this through sensationally breath-taking filming locations, ultimately ominous sound effects & music and some extremely blatant gore effects. Filmed in one of the most beautiful regions of the world the South African/Namibian deserts, "Dust Devil" introduces a drifting stranger who gets picked up by a beautiful woman and brought back to an isolated guest house for a night of passionate sex. However, the drifter is an ancient demoniacal African shape-shifter feeding on the despair of depressed people and thus viciously butchers the woman and sets her house on fire before hitching onwards. Next victim is the insecure South African housewife Wendy Robinson, who finally dared to leave her dominant husband and now journeys through the desert on her way to the sea. Meanwhile, the fatigue police officer Ben Mukurob hasn't got the slightest trace to follow and enlists the help of a spiritual cinema projector to learn more about the unusual serial killer. Basically, "Dust Devil" is simply a standard horror story about a traveling serial killer and all the supernatural gibberish and typically African talk about magic are totally irrelevant. The film is amazingly atmospheric and often downright scary, but only thanks to the godforsaken and desolate locations and nightmarish music, because all the rest is disappointingly amateurish. The narration, for example, is completely uninformative and quite annoying. Stanley's subtly processed lectures on South African politics feel somewhat obtrusive whereas the actually relevant dialogs are extremely weak. Worst of all, however, are the irredeemably awful acting performances from the ensemble cast. I personally never liked Robert John Burke but definitely expected a better and more vivid job from Chelsea Field.
Review of Dust Devil
