A Visceral Action Thriller Has Streaming Viewers Rooted in Brutal History

There’s no way of guessing which films are poised to explode on streaming, but even if there was some kind of method to the madness, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone that would have pegged 2014’s New Zealand-set historical action thriller The Dead Lands as a prime candidate.

And yet, that’s exactly what’s happened after the widely-acclaimed tale of bloody revenge bludgeoned its enemies on the way to securing a spot on the Prime Video global most-watched charts, as per FlixPatrol. The Dead Lands even got a small screen spinoff series that ran for eight episodes, even if there’s been no news on any further adventures since the last one dropped in March 2020.

Any blood-drenched tale of vengeance rooted in the distant past will invariably draw comparisons to Mel Gibson’s unflinching Apocalypto, but The Dead Lands is one of the few to have come close to matching the Mayan adventure in terms of pure quality, storytelling capabilities, and all-out carnage.

Maori chieftain’s son Hongi sets out to seek retribution for his father’s murder, after a shocking betrayal leads to his tribe being slaughtered. Outnumbered and way out of his depth, the youngster had to make a dangerous and potentially deadly trip through the titular location in order to forge a shaky truce with the fearsome fighter who has dominion over the territory.

There’s plenty to love for old school action junkies, then, with The Dead Lands offering a myriad of scraps that range from the breathless to the heart-in-mouth.

via Transmission Films

There’s no way of guessing which films are poised to explode on streaming, but even if there was some kind of method to the madness, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone that would have pegged 2014’s New Zealand-set historical action thriller The Dead Lands as a prime candidate.

And yet, that’s exactly what’s happened after the widely-acclaimed tale of bloody revenge bludgeoned its enemies on the way to securing a spot on the Prime Video global most-watched charts, as per FlixPatrol. The Dead Lands even got a small screen spinoff series that ran for eight episodes, even if there’s been no news on any further adventures since the last one dropped in March 2020.

Any blood-drenched tale of vengeance rooted in the distant past will invariably draw comparisons to Mel Gibson’s unflinching Apocalypto, but The Dead Lands is one of the few to have come close to matching the Mayan adventure in terms of pure quality, storytelling capabilities, and all-out carnage.

Maori chieftain’s son Hongi sets out to seek retribution for his father’s murder, after a shocking betrayal leads to his tribe being slaughtered. Outnumbered and way out of his depth, the youngster had to make a dangerous and potentially deadly trip through the titular location in order to forge a shaky truce with the fearsome fighter who has dominion over the territory.

There’s plenty to love for old school action junkies, then, with The Dead Lands offering a myriad of scraps that range from the breathless to the heart-in-mouth.