Independent author Matthew J. Barbeler has alleged the upcoming film Carnifex, which is also being adapted into a video game by South Australian developer Mighty Kingdom, is an unlicensed work that takes direct inspiration from his original property – a horror novel also titled Carnifex, released in 2016. The producers of Carnifex (the film) strenuously deny these claims.
Barbeler’s Carnifex is a horror story set in the Australian outback, described as Jurassic Park meets Wolf Creek. In the novel, a team of five tourists go exploring in bushland, only to stumble ‘into the hunting grounds of a predator long thought extinct.’