Wolf Creek

WOLF CREEK
OPTIMUM RELEASING
RELEASED 16 September 2005
Backpacking in Australia is one long party for Liz Hunter (Cassandra Magrath) and Kristy Earl (Kestie Morassi), twenty-something Brits who sleep under the stars and wake up hungover to beautiful sunsets. Hooking up with Aussie Ben Mitchell (Nathan Phillips), they start the drive from Western Australia towards the opposite coast and the party town of Cairns. This will take them days of driving through the Australian outback, where you can go all day without seeing a soul. After an uncomfortable encounter at a gas stop, the friends reach Wolf Creek National Park, stopping to check out the incredible meteor crater. When they return to the car, their watches have stopped and the car won’t start. Are other-wordly forces at work, or is something else to blame? It isn’t long before the trio are in fear for their lives.
First-time Australian director and writer Greg Mclean has made a fantastic debut feature that brings to mind the intensity of ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ in it’s unrelenting terror. The cinematography starts off with ‘tourist brochure’ shots of gorgeous landscapes and endless roads under blue skies, but when night falls this same enviroment becomes a ‘hell on earth’, the endless dark offering no obvious escape. The three travellers have walked into the stuff of nightmares, and the film sucessfully does more than one about-turn when you least expect it. You really don’t know what’s coming next. Importing that famous ‘Crocodile Dundee’ line (‘that’s not a knife…’) into the script guarantees you will never remember those words with quite the same affection again!
The realistic acting and minimal script are faultless, combining casual humour, tension, and eventual total panic. It was interesting to note that the female leads Magrath and Morassi are both Australian who deliver perfect British accents. Both they and Nathan Phillips give emphatic performances, building up a strong bond with the audience. You’re willing them on all the way.
‘Wolf Creek’ is based on true events, and it’s interesting to speculate on how close the filmmakers may have come to the real truth. For the poor people involved, I hope not too closely! Moments of sickening grossness mark ‘Wolf Creek’ out as definitely not a film for the squeamish. This isn’t fantastical horror of the ‘Ring’ style, this is on-your-doorstep, it-could-happen-anywhere stuff. As an illustration, a few critics actually walked out of the screening at points of overwhelming intensity.
Just as ‘Jaws’ made people afraid to go in the water thirty years ago, ‘Wolf Creek’ will make you think twice about going backpacking or hitching again.
FOUR OUT OF FIVE