Wolf Creek
Directed by Greg Mclean Starring: John Jarratt, Cassandra Magrath, Kestie Morassi, Nathan Phillips The first song on the new Manic Street Preachers’ album has the line ; “The more I see, the less I scream”. This was appropriate when sitting down to watch Wolf Creek. It passed me by on it’s release. I mistakenly thought of it as a generic stalk and slash movie, a genre that tends to have more misses than hits. Due to the extreme nature of the film Martyrs, recently viewed and reviewed, the violence in Wolf Creek was mild in comparison. Had I watched Wolf Creek at it’s time of release it would have had more impact. That said, it is still an effective, violent chiller, that has a slow build-up to a nasty third act. The movie purports to be “based upon real events” but this movie is no more based upon real events the The Blair Witch Project and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Wolf Creek opens like a mild teen road movie with the engaging characters of Liz, Kristy and Ben, preparing for a lengthy trip to North Australia. The two girls are British, which gives dimension to their predicament while their new friend, Ben, comes from Sydney. He’s just as much of a tourist in this part of Australia as they are. The threat is not apparent until the second half of the movie, with only a red herring thrown in beforehand during a stop at a café. This café is not unlike the one visited by “Goose” at the beginning of the original Mad Max, for those who are interested. The crowd in this café are a bunch of bored, “good ole boys” led by “Bazza”, with hair triggers, and the assumption is made that the future threat to the group will come from within their ranks or by Bazza himself. It’s clever and done in such a way that when the real threat presents itself, it’s insidious and without much warning. Managing to make a joke of the confrontation and walk out of the café without incident, the three continue their journey to the crater whilst the weather deteriorates. A story is related on how UFOs have been spotted in the area, especially the closer visitors get to the crater area. The girls immediately laugh this off until they reach the crater where the ambience gives the urban legend a little boost. As the first part of the film slowly builds tension, we witness Kristy pointing out that Liz and Ben like each other. A very natural scene sees the pair finally express their mutual attraction. I liked this scene because the two actors did a fine job of convincing me it was natural and spontaneous; that they’ve been holding these feelings in and were now able to release them. This of course is another mild portent to how things will end up at the end of the film. The characters are so well fleshed out and real that when the inevitable happens, it’s forceful and moving. Upon returning to the car, the three find that their watches have stopped at about the same time. The car won’t start either. Whilst there is never an explanation given to why this should occur, I put it down to the metals that may have been distributed in the Earth from the cataclysmic impact and perhaps it’s effect on the electro-magnetic spectrum. As you’d expect the three are worried that they are in the middle of nowhere with no means to get back to a populated area. As night falls, with the rain still coming down, a set of lights is seen through the car windscreen. The rain water on the window, coupled with the dark means that they can’t immediately see what the lights belong to. The three think back to the UFO story and are relieved that it’s a local with a truck. The seemingly ordinary Mick Taylor tends to the car engine and says that they need a coil replaced and it happens that he has one back toward where he lives. Mick fascinates the three as he seems to represent the solid, no-nonsense Bush dweller in a positive way, a counterpoint to Bazza from the café earlier. Naturally, the three are worried that he will expect payment when they don’t hold any significant cash. He balks at the idea that he would charge them for his time and labour and gives them a tow. The journey takes longer than they expected, but reassure themselves that he told them if would be a lengthy drive South. As the group sit around a fire and chat, it becomes clear that Mick has some unusual hobbies and a different outlook on life to the three, especially when Ben makes an innocuous remark and is rewarded with a hard stare that lightly unnerves the others until tension is broken. The group are sitting around the fire drinking then the screen blackens presumably highlighting a transition to nap time for the characters. The film turns on it’s outback boot heel. Liz awakens to find herself hog tied in one of the dirty out houses. No-one else is around. She finds a sliver of broken window and painfully attacks her bonds. Scouting around the buildings, she finds that Kristy is bound, bloody, and hanging from a hook by the ties around her hands. This is where the majority of viewers are going to have trouble. It’s not what is being done to Kristy, what we see is more humiliating than physical torment, but it’s the thought of what has been done to her. I recall being a typical bloke and finding her the most attractive of the pair. Seeing her in this state is the polar opposite of the carefree girl we’ve seen earlier in the movie, nicely filling out a T-shirt. Unlike the majority of films of this type, Liz is not stupid. She creates a diversion to take Mick’s attention away from Kristy. In fact it’s Mick that has been duped into thinking that a blaze has been spread from the embers of the night’s fire. It doesn’t overly concern him that Liz could have escaped. Kristy is too hysterical to rescue in time, so Liz has to hide under a table as Mick explains, in grisly detail, how he’s going to treat her and how he’s treated other girls, using a hanging mangled decaying corpse as reference. Liz manages to get hold of Mick’s rifle and gets off a round that scrapes the side of his neck. He falls down, seemingly incapacitated, but Liz is no killer and doesn’t make sure he’s dead. Liz releases Kristy and they attempt to get away in a vehicle. The tension through these scenes is such that one has to continue, despite not knowing how bad things are going to end up. A dazed Mick tries to shoot the girls but Liz manages to drive away. In the dark, it’s difficult to know where to go and Liz opts to make it look like they’ve had an accident over a ravine, pushing the truck over the edge. Mick follows and sees the wreckage but presumably wants to see if he can salvage the girl’s remains. Yeah, he really is a stand up guy. Liz tells Kristy to hide whilst she goes back to the compound to get a second vehicle while Mick is busy. Liz enters the garage and finds keepsakes from dozens of similar abductions. This is further elaborated on by her finding a couple of cameras, including Ben’s that shows he stalks travellers and had been following them before the “Good Samaritan” ruse. Liz starts the engine of another vehicle but is wounded by Mick, with a huge Bowie knife. She feebly attempts to fend him off with a Swiss Army knife and he cuts a number of her fingers off, for her trouble. He then severs her spinal cord, citing that this practice was used as torture in Vietnam, and now she “…is a head on a stick”. This scene is probably the most brutal, and stark scene in the entire picture. It’s cruel and realistic and brings to mind the full horror of what man is capable of doing despite it being used in a fictional picture. In one line, “…head on a stick” I was sickened, knowing what the implication behind that meant. Kristy has escaped to the highway. As chance would have it an elderly couple are approaching and they stop to help her. Unfortunately, Mick, who boasted earlier that he could target Water Buffalo from a moving helicopter, targets the driver and shoots him through the eye socket. Kirsty manages to drive off but Mick shoots a tyre out causing the car to crash. He shoots Kirsty dead and dumps her body in the boot of his vehicle. Up until now I was wondering what had happened to Ben. We find that he has been nailed on a crude crucifix with hungry dogs for company (luckily caged) and chewed corpses similarly crucified. With effort he pulls himself from the nails and escapes. He’s found by two Swedish travellers and rescued. The final denouement adopts a pseudo-documentary style epilogue that illustrates Ben’s incarceration following his story. 4 months later he is released without charge. This echoes the Bradley John Murdoch case that, ironically caused the movie to be unavailable in the Northern Terrorities for fear of influencing the outcome of the court case. The film’s power is in the fact that Australia is a huge place, with plenty of low population areas segregated by long stretches of highway where many people disappear every year. This is more than likely down to tourists not taking care in a terrain that is unfamiliar or by them not taking the proper precautions. But, it’s just as likely that there are some twisted, insane characters off the beaten track looking for kicks by trapping tourists and having their way with them. The Hollywood parallel is Texas with its areas of barren country and in-bred families and the belief that they’re made up of psychos; an urban legend that the Texas tourism board does not like, understandably. Wolf Creek will have done the Australian tourist industry no favours either. Mick Taylor is also a believable character that anyone of us might fall victim to. He seems amiable and friendly, willing to help with his hunting stories just part of his life in a barren part of the world where the smallest industry is going to the wall. All three tourists are full characters that attract sympathy and empathy. They’re also not stupid. They look for ways out of the situation whenever possible. I hate the Hollywood view that a woman has to stand screaming instead of the adopting the fight or flight response natural to us. Thankfully, films using this stereotype are few and far between compared to the 1980s stalk and slash films. Some highbrow American critics didn’t see the film’s worth whilst, typically, UK critics saw beyond the violence itself to note the professionalism to which the director approached the story. Roger Ebert famously giving the film a zero rating, accusing the director of exploitation The cinematography is superb and captures the locale perfectly. An aerial shot of the real “Wolfe Creek” in NW Australia, shows the scale of the crater; a real location although not featured in the footage with the actors, which was filmed in South Australia. The brightness of the location deteriorates through the movie as if a portent to the coming horror. Another possible nod to Mad Max is the viewing of car headlights through a rain battered car windshield. This is similar to a scene at the end of Mad Max which helps to show the audience just how long Max has been driving without sleep, that the softened headlights in the rain, coupled with the oncoming vehicle’s horn, wake Max from a near sleep at the wheel. I didn’t notice the score in this movie. I guess that it wasn’t too obtrusive and fit the mood well. This is unusual for me as I find the scores to movies very important. Verdict: Overall, A very good example of modern horror filmmaking. Like Martyrs it questions why we watch horror movies and should make the viewer think. If it doesn’t make you think, then you might want to question how you do think about seeing realistic violence on screen than the Friday the 13ths and Halloweens. 7 out of 10 (Wayfarer)
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