Long Weekend wants to be a taut psychological horror but when all is said and done it is just another muddled remake hampered by an absence of logic and unlikable characters. The supernatural card is played, as it all too often is these days, to allow for pointless padding and cheap scares when the truth is the stripped-down concept of nature fighting back against arrogant suburbanites had enough potential to carry a great movie in itself without resorting to such silly concepts as a road that goes round in circles late at night only to mysteriously come to a dead end next morning or dead animals that move in the night.
Jim Caveziel plays Peter, a man whose marriage is on the brink of collapse following his wife Carla's infidelity and as a result plans a surfing trip in an effort to try and save their marriage. Why we should care about Peter and his attempted reconciliation is unclear as he is an abusive, self-centered jackass from beginning to end; while it's hard to condone his wife's cheating, it's also hard to understand why she'd bother sticking around at all. The couple set up camp and promptly start to abuse nature in a variety of ways from dumping their trash recklessly to spraying a nest of ants with bug spray. Nature doesn't take too kindly to this and declares war on the couple.
Pretty soon things start to go awry with mishaps ranging from a misfiring spear gun to a “shark attack” taking the strain on the couple's already shredded relationship. Horror movie cliches then take over as Peter doggedly refuses to give up the rapidly deteriorating situation, while Carla flaps around aimlessly, whining about going home and doing stupid things normally reserved for teenage girls in slasher movies. Interesting concept flip-flops with bad ghost story cliché and you end up by about midway through just wishing nature would offer up a couple of wolves or something just to finish them off and let us get on with our lives.
There was room in Long Weekend for either a good ghost story or good horror movie. But director Jamie Blanks decision to try and messily merge the two results in a confused and cliched mess.
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