Richard Stanley's directorial debut Hardware was a stylish piece of plagiarism that failed to do the source material justice (Stanley ripped off the story from a 'Future Shock' in UK comic 2000AD); Dust Devil, his second feature, is also extremely stylish, and might even have been derived from an original concept, but it also proves disappointing overall, the muddled script relying on trite tribal mysticism to paper over the cracks, and the acting suffering from strong African accents (it's hard to tell if they're lousy actors or if the dialect just gives this impression).
In Namibia, young women driving alone on deserted highways are apparently all too happy to pick up hitch-hikers: the film's 'dust devil', a shape-shifting demon (Robert John Burke) that takes human form to claim the souls of desperate people, is picked up by a woman, who takes him back to her place for sex. He snaps her neck, does unspeakable things to her corpse, and decorates the house with her blood, before torching the place. Policeman Ben Mukurob (Zakes Mokae) tries to track down the killer, who has left a trail of bodies in his wake, but will he be able to destroy the demon before it takes the life of Wendy Robinson (Chelsea Field), the latest idiot to give a lift to the hitch-hiker in the middle of nowhere.
The film's magical mumbo-jumbo, portentous voice-over, and arthouse sensibilities turn what could have been an entertaining supernatural chiller into something of a pretentious slog, with only the stunning cinematography and the occasional spot of gore alleviating the boredom: the desolate sun-baked landscape of Namibia is quite breath-taking - far more remarkable than any of the human performers - and the violent imagery, which includes a splendid shotgun blast to the head in the final act, is impressively nasty when it occurs.
Available in various edits due to a troubled history with producers and distributors, Dust Devil is probably best appreciated with the Final Cut, in which Stanley had the final say; it's almost two hours long, but is probably the most coherent version of a film that is fairly muddled at the best of times.
In Namibia, young women driving alone on deserted highways are apparently all too happy to pick up hitch-hikers: the film's 'dust devil', a shape-shifting demon (Robert John Burke) that takes human form to claim the souls of desperate people, is picked up by a woman, who takes him back to her place for sex. He snaps her neck, does unspeakable things to her corpse, and decorates the house with her blood, before torching the place. Policeman Ben Mukurob (Zakes Mokae) tries to track down the killer, who has left a trail of bodies in his wake, but will he be able to destroy the demon before it takes the life of Wendy Robinson (Chelsea Field), the latest idiot to give a lift to the hitch-hiker in the middle of nowhere.
The film's magical mumbo-jumbo, portentous voice-over, and arthouse sensibilities turn what could have been an entertaining supernatural chiller into something of a pretentious slog, with only the stunning cinematography and the occasional spot of gore alleviating the boredom: the desolate sun-baked landscape of Namibia is quite breath-taking - far more remarkable than any of the human performers - and the violent imagery, which includes a splendid shotgun blast to the head in the final act, is impressively nasty when it occurs.
Available in various edits due to a troubled history with producers and distributors, Dust Devil is probably best appreciated with the Final Cut, in which Stanley had the final say; it's almost two hours long, but is probably the most coherent version of a film that is fairly muddled at the best of times.