Product Details

• Actors: Rachel Hurd-Wood, Phoebe Tonkin
• Directors: Stuart Beattie
• Writers: Stuart Beattie
• Producers: Michael Boughen, Peter D. Graves, Christopher Mapp, Andrew Mason, Matthew Street
• Format: NTSC
• Region: All Regions
• Number of discs: 1
• Studio: Freestyle Digital Media
• DVD Release Date: February 28, 2012
• Run Time: 103 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (94 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0073JF4ES
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #33,187 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Tomorrow When the War Began is a film about seven college bound friends who return from a weekend camping trip to discover that a foreign army has invaded their Australian homeland. With their friends and families taken prisoner, they must band together and find a way to fight for their freedom and survival. TWTWB is based on the best-selling book series and is written and directed by Stuart Beattie, whose writing credits include "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl," "Collateral" and "G.I. Joe," and produced by Andrew Mason ("The Matrix" Trilogy; "Dark City").

This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Great movie based on excellent book March 2, 2012

By Laura G Wolfe

Format:Amazon Instant Video|Amazon Verified Purchase

This movie begins as a coming of age romance story set in Australia. It becomes an action flick when Australia is invaded and the characters have to fight to survive.
It is a satisfying coming of age story but spends too much time developing characters (done well) to be a great action flick.

I am also a fan of Red Dawn, but thought this movie was much better.

If you are a fan of the young adult series Tomorrow When the War Began know that this movie fits the first book quite well and thoroughly sets the scene for a sequel (or nine). I have read the books, where all the components are thoroughly fleshed out, I rather enjoyed the movie.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining adaption of an excellent book! January 8, 2011

By John E. Larsen

Format:DVD

This is the film adaption of John Marsden's 1993 novel of a group of teenagers caught up in a foreign invasion of Australia. In short - it's great! Given the books popularity, I had some concerns that the film might not do it justice and it might look like `Home & Away' (Australian TV Soap) goes to war! But the actors, most with TV acting experience, do a creditable job and aren't there solely for their looks or profile. For the most part they fit what a normal group of teens would look like and as the action kicks in they take on a suitably unkempt look anyway. Of the key characters, Homer was very good and most importantly, Ellie worked for me too. There was a surprise or two in terms of casting choices and frankly Robyn will not work for everyone. A real plus was that some of the secondary characters get more exposure than in the book. The interactions between them all are fine, with the humour in particular being well delivered. For those concerned about coarser things, there is a little bit of sexual conversation but no nudity, some low level drug use and I'm pleased to say minimal bad language.

With a film adaption there are always a few tweaks to the original story and I have to say that for me, these all worked quite well and in a number of scenes, were very good. There was also some additional information on the wider situation with the war and this was most welcome given the book is very vague on this aspect. All the key events in the book are there and the film makers did a good job constructing them. There are plenty of explosions and the war violence is conveyed in a stronger manner than in the book. It is quite action packed and I found it to be genuinely exciting at times! It is not Mad Max and it shouldn't be either. It is a film made for a modern teen audience and those who enjoyed the book - as a teen or otherwise.

Military obsessives will find a few faults in how the enemy army is depicted. They're not the most efficient army ever either but they are certainly very violent at times and make suitable villains. There are some updates in terms of the technology that wasn't around in 1993 and also some fun, topical youth-culture humour and moments. The final scene is a bit hokey but the vision of the walk into 'Hell' is jawdropping! Altogether I found very little to criticize, this is a very entertaining film that I think fans of the book will embrace.
4 ˝ stars

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Australia's "Red Dawn". October 1, 2011

By Bob Eggleton

Format:Blu-ray

Based on a series of bestselling young adult author James Marsden's books, this details the lives of teenagers living out a last bit of fun with an adventurous road trip/camping vacation to a remote area, before school is about to come back in session. Starts off innocently and freewheeling enough as they leave a small country Wirrawee town somewhere in NSW. One night one of the kids awakens to the sound of squadrons of jets zooming overhead... and goes back to sleep thinking nothing of it.

When the teenagers pack up and return from their "secret" grotto which they established is theirs, they find most of the homes abandoned,families missing, power out,dogs shot dead, and vehicles burning. Going further into the center of town by nightfall they soon see the truth: Australia has been invaded by an unknown, Asian "Coalition" possibly Chinese, Indonesian or Burmese-or all of them. Brutal and uncompromising, anyone arguing with them in the "indoctrination" prison camps they've set up is shot dead.

The group, unknown at this point to the invaders, runs back into the country homes to hide, and start making plans to defend their town and rescue their loved ones. They also realize the massive scope of this war with various radio snippets and the shocking realization that the world cannot help them, they're on their own. The smaller Australia forces are overwhelmed by the massive invasion which seeks to annex Australia for it's natural resources and vast areas of open land. They become guerilla fighters taking the battle to the enemy on their own terms. WHen they realize the enemy has figured out they are hiding in their family's homes(one is completely firebombed) they retreat further to their hard to access vacation grotto and start making more ambitous plans.

Overall pretty good film, filled with teenage angst and doubts and some fairly good special effects, one depicting an air battle.