Hey folks, Harry here... I've been dying to see this since pre-Sundance when I started writing about it. The true story that this is based on is one of the more horrific crimes around - that they turned it into an absolutely brutal and unflinching horror film... well, the word I've heard from other horror filmmakers that have seen it is that this thing is a kick in the balls with Doc Martens intense. Can't wait! I need more brutality in cinema. I likes mine, raw!
Hi Harry and the gang - how are things at AICN HQ?
I'm a British backpacker in Australia at the moment for the Melbourne International Film Festival. About 30 minutes ago I came out of a screening of Greg McLean's vicious horror chiller Wolf Creek. I've only ever written to you once before Harry, and that was about 10 years ago to express my outrage when Warners pulled the plug on the Ridley Scott version of I Am Legend weeks from shooting. I thought I'd chip in with my take on Wolf Creek since it's inevitably going to generate a lot of discussion - and infamy - if it gets a wide release overseas.
Greg McLean is a Melbourne boy himself and was there in person to introduce his film, along with the producer, composer and one of his lead actresses. Basically his introduction amounted to 'thanks everyone who worked on the film, I hope you enjoy my movie', which was slightly underwhelming. It would have been better if he'd done a Q&A at the end. The film claims to be "based on actual events" and I for one would have liked the chance to ask Greg how much liberty he'd taken with the truth, since based on actual events is a claim frequently applied dubiously to horror films in the past.
Onto the film. Very little happens for the first 30-40 minutes as we get to know the characters, three backpackers (one guy and two girls) who rent a scrappy old car - never a good idea - in which to cross the Aussie outback. As the fun surf vibe of Broome in Western Australia fades away and the landscape becomes more like something from Nic Roeg's Walkabout, our trio bump into a succession of eccentric local weirdos at gas stations and roadhouses. This assortment of stereotypical twitching hicks will be nothing new to anyone well versed in the likes of Deliverance or Cabin Fever, but in all honesty guessing which one of them's going to prove to have a screw dangerously loose provides half the fun of this opening 40 minutes.
In classic slasher movie style the car breaks down, stranding our heroes near the remote geological attraction of Wolf Creek, site of a vast meteor crater. Night falls and someone comes to offer them help... but is he really the salvation he seems?
The segue from rollicking-if-slightly-weird road trip to outright savagery is brilliantly handled. MINOR SPOILER ALERT - The three backpackers go to sleep round a campfire. Later, at what we assume is morning, the camera pulls back from a close-up of one of the girl's faces to show her hands and feet are suddenly tightly bound - END SPOILER ALERT.
From this point on it's a heartpounding battle of wits for the tourists to escape their living nightmare. Not only do they have a sharp-shooting loony intent on their rape and murder, but if they DO escape they still have to contend with the unimaginable vastness of the Outback, and almost certain death from the elements. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place...
There's been a few false dawns for the horror genre over the past few years, with everything from Dog Soldiers to Cabin Fever being touted as the return to the brutal, independent super-realistic vein of horror which came to the fore during the seventies. Forget Dog Soldiers and Cabin Fever though. They're child's play compared to this - Wolf Creek is the one. Hell, it even looks like it was shot on leftover film stock from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In my opinion though, grainy-vision is the only way to present horror - who truly wants a glossy slasher film? There's an unhinged rawness to this film which makes it so much more real.
Don't think I'm going to shower this film with praise though. Far from it. It's almost TOO unrelenting in its nastiness, so much so that there's a significant 'why?' hanging over the entire enterprise. It's perverse, upsetting and near-pornographic in its depiction of torture. And I don't speak as a wussy horror virgin - horror's my favourite genre bar none, and I seek out every new offering in the same way that a rollercoaster fanatic will fly thousands of miles to try the latest ride just to feel the buzz, or the walker ascends the highest mountain just because it's there. I actively hunt these extreme experiences in the hope of finding something truly sensational and powerful.
But, with hindsight, Wolf Creek is an enormously disturbing ordeal to willingly subject yourself to. This isn't the sort of film that flinches away at the first glint of a knife flashing through the air, or fades to black with a 'squelch' sound effect to simulate a stabbing... you see every incision, every slash and every slice with voyeuristic clarity. This is not a subtle film.
Also on the minus side, there's a few 'hmmmmmm' moments of logic suspension that threaten to draw you away from the victims' plight. I'll choose the three worst offenders here, but beware SPOLIERS BELOW.
1) At one point, our heroine cripples the lunatic with a rifle shot to the ear, causing him to fall down apparently dead. Instead of finishing him off - they're in what looks like a warehouse, with heavy tools everywhere, all more than adequate for pounding his head into a hamburger - they scarper and try to flee in a car. When Mr Headcase re-appears a few minutes later wielding a shotgun, they really only have themselves to blame...
2) Stealing a car to escape, the girls drive through the night with the inbred loon in hot pursuit, and find themselves accidentally back on the cusp of the meteor crater. They both get out of the car and push it over the side of the cliff... apparently to try and fake their own deaths... come on girls, think about it! Now you've got to try and sneak back into the killer's compound to pinch ANOTHER car to get away in. But you had a car a few minutes ago before you deliberately rolled it into a ball! Doh...
3) As mentioned, one of the girls creeps back into the compound to find a new car, knowing full well that the nutjob is on his way back to finish them off. Instead of getting the hell on with it, she comes across a room full of travellers' camping gear and spends a good five minutes sifting through everyone's knickknacks to prove to herself that - shock! - this isn't the first time he's kidnapped and killed tourists! Like, "get a friggin' move on girl!" Sure enough, by the time she finally bothers to find a car, she's got an unwelcome back seat passenger...
END SPOILERS.
The film's got one HUGE plus point though - John Jarratt's brilliant portrayal of the psycho. He hasn't got a leatherface mask or a chainsaw, but his deranged killer is every bit as disturbing as Gunnar Hansen's creation in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And as a sidenote, he has a wonderfully unsettling "uh-uh-uh" laugh that will go down in cinema history.
Two scenes worthy of particular note: Jarratt's initial torture of one of the girls, pretending to shoot her as she pleads for her life, then promising to cut off her titties and "play with you for months"; and his subsequent disabling attack on the girl's friend with a knife twist through the spinal column. Both scenes are hard to watch. Interestingly, the latter scene is reminiscent of Misery, in that Jarratt explains the background to the head-on-a-stick punishment he's about to inflict on the girl, in the same way that Annie Wilkes calmly describes the practise of 'hobbling' before swiping Paul's feet off. Gruesome stuff.
Did I enjoy this movie? Only marginally more than enduring the head-on-a-stick treatment myself. Did I admire it as a film? Yes, hugely. It's uncompromising, affecting and a true gut-wrenching horror. Will I ever watch it again? Not while I have breath in my body. It begs the question, how far is too far? Everything you've heard about Wolf Creek is true. This isn't PG-13 horror-lite. This is NASTY. It makes Rob Zombie look like Jonathan Frakes.
If you use this, call me SAL PARADISE.
(And on that note, it's great news that Jack Kerouac's On The Road is finally heading for production with Walter Salles helming, but personally I'd be more excited if Francis Ford Coppola was directing rather than just producing. But the question remains - who to cast as Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty??)
