The Dead Lands

Lawrence Makoare as The Warrior / Monster

Here we go back to the stone age which only ended a few hundred years ago in the Americas and New Zealand, which is where this movie is set. It's basically a tale of deception, murder and revenge, as you might expect from blood-thirsty, stone-age savages. There are some things that look a little odd to the modern eye, but they might be accurate portrayals. Hard to tell though since there's been 500 years of cross-cultural contamination.
    A group of Maori warriors comes to visit another village on the pretext of visiting a 'graveyard' and paying their respects to their ancestors. It quickly becomes obvious that that is just an excuse and they are actually looking for a fight. The chief mollifies them with some clever words, but that only works for a bit. They come back in the middle of the night and massacre all the men in the village, all except for one boy who gets pushed down a hill and manages to hide until the killers have departed.
    Most of the rest of the movie is fight scenes. We'll have one or two guys facing down a group of a dozen or more, but the dozen won't rush them all at once, and they don't use their spears. They'll come at him, one or two at a time using their slashing clubs. Perhaps they have some code of honor that requires they make it something of a fair fight, at least when the sun's out. There is a lot of posturing and grimacing prior to the actual fighting, but the old guy dispatches most of the younger warriors easily. Could it be they haven't had enough experience and / or practice and so haven't learned any good fighting skills? Or maybe they are just stupid and didn't think they need any skills. Being big and strong and full of bravado had gotten them this far, why would we need to learn any skills? Wrong lunkhead, whack! and down he goes.