Review: The Dead Lands, 2015, dir. Toa Fraser

“Thirty years ago, give or take, Toa Fraser’s The Dead Lands would have fit in nicely during the period’s boom of heroic fantasy films—Krull, Hawk the Slayer, Conan the Barbarian, Fire and Ice, The Sword and the Sorcerer—save for a paucity of camp. Not that The Dead Lands is an entirely somber affair, mind you, but itdoes kick off with genocidal slaughter engineered by a warmongering lunatic, with men, women, and children brutally killed as they lie sleeping and their huts burn beneath the stars. Unlike its elder fantastical cousins, there’s a sense that what we see happen in The Dead Landsmight actually have occurred in Māori history.” (Via Movie Mezzanine.)