In Jamie Blanks' (STORM WARNING) remake of Colin Eggleston's underrated LONG WEEKEND (on Synapse Films' DVD in a beautiful HD-mastered transfer), Peter (Jim Caviezel) drags his wife Carla (Claudia Karvan) along on a weekend camping trip. Their friends fail to turn up and they get lost in the dark (Peter hits a kangeroo with his four-by-four and causes a small fire with a cigarette thrown out the window). The long weekend finds Carla bored while Peter trudges about the beach shooting animals and spreading litter. As the tensions in their relationship bubble to the surface (infidelity and a miscarriage), it seems as though nature is turning the tables on them as the kangaroos watch, snakes slither, and a dead dugong's corpse seems to be making its way up the beach towards the campsite.

Scripted by Australian horror regular Everett DeRoche (who also scripted the original), the remake follows the original fairly closely and that is perhaps its weakness. The actors and the filmmakers seem to be going through the motions. Blanks and his cinematographer deliver a slicker but bland image than the atmospheric original (the original's cinematographer Vincent Monton is credited here as 2nd unit DP) but the pacing and buildup of what should be odd occurrences is haphazard (the dugong corpse that makes its way up the beach seems thrown into the script as if the filmmakers remembered it at the last moment). It's bad but not in the sacrilegious way of many remakes and re-imaginings, it's just unnecessary.