Wolf Creek
(2005) 99 min.
Rated: R (gore)
Country: Australia
Director: Greg Mclean
Starring: John Jarratt, Cassandra Magrath, Kestie Morassi, Nathan Phillips
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★★★☆
Three young tourists are in for a horrific detour in Wolf Creek
Synopsis:
In Australian summer of 1999, two British tourists Liz (Magrath) and Kristy (Morassi) and an Australian friend named Ben (Phillips) buy a used beat-up car and decide to travel from Broome to Cairns, Queensland via the Great Northern Highway.
Along the way they decide to stop and visit Wolf Creek, a giant crater formed by a meteorite thousands of years ago. They spend a few minutes climbing it and enjoying the view. Just as the day wears on, they decide to return to their car. However, the car doesn’t start at all. The girls notice that their watches no longer work either. Ben tries to investigate the engine, but he doesn’t know what to look for. Since the place is deserted, they decide to stay the night in the car, since night is quickly approaching.
They’re still awake as it’s dark and Ben tells the girls stories of UFOs. Soon they see lights approaching and are frightened (thinking it might be UFOs) but soon realize it’s a car. They go out to greet the car and a man in a hat approaches them. He’s a bushman named Mick (Jarratt) and is extremely friendly and suggests that he’ll tow them back to his home so that he can fix their car and have them on the road the next day.
Although they’re at first a little apprehensive, they decide that it would be better to go with him rather than stay out in the middle of nowhere. Mick tows their car for what seems like hours in the dark blackness of the outback until they finally arrive at an old mining yard which Mick explains was abandoned.
He offers them “rainwater from the top end” and tells them about his exploits as a headshooter who killed vermin on large farms. He describes stories of killing animals by hand and by shooting them. Finally he makes a show of working on Ben’s car. The three kids fall asleep in sleeping bags around the campfire.
The next day, near late afternoon, Liz awakes finding herself tied up and gagged in a shed with one window. She manages to cut herself free of the plastic zip-ties binding her using a shard of glass and slips out of the shed. Before she runs out of the mining camp she hears the cries of Kristy from a garage and decides to go back.
Liz peers into a window and finds that Kristy is tied to a pole in the garage. Mick teases her, tortures her, having cut her enough to have bled. She cries in agony and fear as Mick threatens to shoot her and also sexually assault her.
Liz decides to create a distraction and starts a fire on the car, which had its engine disassembled. Mick goes out to investigate and as he’s away, Liz shows Kristy that she’s there and hides before Mick returns. When Mick returns he’s distracted with Kristy and this is when Liz grabs his gun and points it at Mick. Liz shoots Mick in the neck, which causes him to faint. Kristy pleads with Liz to kill him, but she doesn’t know how to reload the gun and decides to just leave him.
They take his keys and steal his truck. Mick stumbles out of the garage with a shotgun and shoots at them. The girls manage to get away for a time and drive the truck over a cliff in order to distract Mick, who is following them. Mick goes to investigate the fallen truck and the two girls decide to go back for another car. Liz tells Kristy to wait for her and if she doesn’t return in five minutes, to just escape on her own.
Liz returns to the mining camp and looks around. She finds a gun, loads it, but drops it later into a shaft. She goes into the shaft but finds rotting corpses and quickly flees. She finds a set of keys but is distracted looking at all the items Mick has collected from his victims. She watches video on a camcorder showing Mick meeting another family and helping them tow their car. Finally, Liz tries the keys on one of the cars and just as the engine starts, she hears Mick laughing from the seat behind her. He stabs her in her side, causing her to to panic and fall out of the car.
She waves a swiss army knife at him, but he has a large knife and decides to interrogate her to find Kristy. She puts her hand up to fight back and he slices off her digits in one swoop. He picks her up and sticks his knife behind her (presumably) in her spinal column so that she can no longer run away or fight back. He asks her about Kristy and the point-of-view switches to Kristy.
Kristy wakes up, realizing that Liz never returned and starts to run. It’s morning and soon she reaches the highway. Bloody and tired she manages to flag down the first passing motorist she sees. He stops and starts to give her a thermos of water, but as he’s out of the car the man gets shot dead. Kristy begins to realize that Mick is shooting at her and retrieves the keys from the dead motorist and starts to drive off. Mick, however, is fast approaching and she manages to run him off the road. However, he uses his rifle to shoot a tire on her car and then approaches her car, shooting her in the head. He gathers up the motorist and Kristy and burns them in their vehicle.
Ben wakes up with himself nailed to a cross-like structure. He’s in a small cave-like rock formation and there is a dead man also nailed up as he is. In a cage nearby is an angry dog. Ben slowly pulls his arms off the nails and releases himself from the cross. He makes his way out of the cave and runs around in the bush, exhausted and unaware of where he is.
He finally passes out somewhere and is found by Swedish tourists who take him into their van and drive him to the nearest town. He is then airlifted to a hospital.
After this there is a montage of footage and the film explains that there was no trace of Kristy or Liz ever found. Ben was eventually cleared of suspicion.
Review:
While not based on a specific event, the film takes aspects of a real murderer in Australia and basically tells this story. This film actually did get to me. I didn’t know much about it before viewing it and perhaps that’s really the best way to view this movie, because the film really does a good job of lulling the audience into a false sense of security. I knew it was horror, but didn’t know what kind. And the most effective types of horror are the kind that seem most real. It’s probably more effective than a ghost story. I’m sure some people will feel the opening act is far too long, but I do think that it helps create a build-up.
Though the character of Mick is one that is almost legendary as he fades into the sunset, it coveys a very real sense that this person could exist. This is definitely a film for people who can stomach torture-porn films. Though there isn’t a great deal of blood on screen, there is enough gore and sound effects and verbal description to make up for what isn’t explicitly shown.
I will say that after viewing this film, I really had no desire to ever take a trip to Australia. Especially the outback.
Notes: John Jarratt has played in most notably Picnic At Hanging Rock and director Mclean’s other films Rogue and Wolf Creek 2.