Wolf Creek

A truly horrifying debut from a young Australian filmmaker, Wolf Creek is one of the first in the new "horror porn" movement.

This summer (and I write this as of February 2006) a whole glut of gore filled movies will be repulsing audiences all over the world. Eli Roth's Hostel has just opened in the U.S. to a number 1 placing at the box office. On its way are The Hills Have Eyes remake from the director behind another gore soaked horror, Swithcblade Romance as well as a more comic take on the genre with Slither.

This new trend in horror movies says goodbye to anaemic scare tactics such as those found in any of the teen horror movies of the last few years (I Know What You Did Last Summer & Urban Legend for example). These movies are all about the gore and pushing the boundaries of taste and decency. It seems that legions of horror fans have been crying out for more and more extreme images for too long.

Wolf Creek could be seen as one of the first of this more sadistic spate of scary movies. To its advantage, it holds off on the scares for quite a while before plunging the audience headlong into all out terror.

The story is the usual one of a group of teenagers on their holidays, this time in the unforgiving open spaces of The Outback, getting into a bit of a pickle when their car brakes down and being towed to safety by a kindly old trucker who also happens to be a sadistic serial killer.

So far so seen-it-all-before, but where Wolf Creek surpasses recent teen horrors is in its gradual build up of suspense, its time taken with building characterisation and in the quite horrifying figure of Mick Taylor (John Jarratt) a wholly believeable Aussie bogeyman whose apparent kindness soon turns to forms of sadism rarely witnessed in cinema. To describe any of his plans for the three youths would be to give away vital parts of the plot. Suffice to say, he's a dab hand with a knife and a rifle.

This film is genuinely going to repulse some people with its hard edge and for this reviewer it was almost heart-stoppingly suspenseful. Although claims of the film that it was "based on true events" seem sketchy at best (you'll find out why at the end of the movie) Wolf Creek nevertheless goes down as containing one of cinema's most memorable bad guys. And here's a nice piture of him .... 

Pleasant looking fellow isn't he? Think Mick Dundee's evil twin and you're pretty much there!

See also: Roadkill
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