Wolf Creek (film)
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| Wolf Creek | |
|---|---|
 Official Poster for Wolf Creek |
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| Directed by | Greg McLean |
| Produced by | George Adams Martin Fabinyi Michael Gudinski Gary Hamilton |
| Written by | Greg McLean |
| Starring | John Jarratt Cassandra Magrath Kestie Morassi Nathan Phillips |
| Music by | Frank Tetaz |
| Cinematography | Will Gibson |
| Editing by | Jason Ballantine |
| Distributed by | Darclight Films Dimension Films |
| Release date(s) | December 25, 2005 |
| Running time | 99 min. |
| Country | Australia  |
| Language | English |
| Budget | AU$1,380 000 |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Wolf Creek is a 2005 Australian horror film, written, produced and directed by Greg McLean and starring Cassandra Magrath, Kestie Morassi, John Jarratt and Nathan Phillips. It was released in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland on 16 September 2005, on 3 November 2005 in Australia (apart from the Northern Territory), and on 25 December 2005 in the United States.
Tagline:
- 30,000 are reported missing in Australia every year. 90% are found within a month. Some are never seen again.
- How can anyone find you if no one knows you're missing?
- The thrill is in the hunt.
Contents |
[edit] Main Cast
- John Jarratt as Mick Taylor
- Cassandra Magrath as Liz Hunter
- Kestie Morassi as Kristy Earl
- Nathan Phillips as Ben Mitchell
[edit] Plot Synopsis
Two British tourists, Liz Hunter (Magrath) and Kristy Earl (Morassi), meet with an Australian man, Ben Mitchell (Phillips), at a party, and they decide to spend the rest of their holiday with him. The young trio plans to drive to Wolf Creek, a large crater formed by a 50,000-kg meteorite, and explore the area.
Upon returning to their car after hiking down to the crater, the group discovers that the car won't start and, unable to discover the problem, prepare themselves to sit out the night. The instance when the characters discover their watches have stopped and that they have inadvertently dozed off while at the crater draws a parallel to a similar scene in the 1975 film Picnic at Hanging Rock, which also featured John Jarratt in a small but important role. After dark, a "Crocodile Dundee"-like character named Mick Taylor (Jarratt) comes upon them and offers to tow them to his camp to repair the car. With no choice but to agree, the group allows Taylor to take them to his camp, a spot which is apparently an abandoned mining site. In the dark, it is not apparent how far they travel, or in which direction. Taylor regales them with tall stories of his past while making a show of fixing the car, claiming the problem to be the ignition coil. His manner unsettles Liz and Kristy, although Ben is less impressed and dismisses the bushman's tales as bravado. The tourists are offered water, which is laced with drugs that render them unconscious.
Liz awakens to find herself tied up in a shed late the next afternoon. She manages to escape as night falls and discovers Mick torturing Kristy. She shoots Mick with one of his own guns but fails to kill him, although this is not apparent immediately. The women flee the camp in one of Taylor's vehicles. Hopelessly lost in the dark, they almost plunge over a cliff into a ravine. Realizing the killer is now behind them, the pair attempts to outwit him by pushing their vehicle off the cliff. Convinced that Taylor may still be out searching for them, the women return to the camp to steal another car. Liz leaves the hysterical Kristy outside the gates, telling her to escape on foot if she does not return in a short time.
Liz enters a garage and discovers Taylor's large stock of cars as well as an organized array of travelers’ possessions, including video cameras. She watches the playback on one of them and is horrified to see Taylor "rescuing" other travelers stranded at Wolf Creek in almost identical circumstances to her own. This suggests Taylor is a serial predator who has snared many others with a similar ruse. She gets into a car and attempts to start it but Taylor announces himself with a sinister chuckle and stabs her through the driver's seat with a huge knife. He then cuts off some of her fingers, severs her spinal cord and tortures her to reveal the location of Kristy. Liz does not reappear in the rest of the film and her eventual fate can only be guessed.
By dawn, Kristy has reached a tarred highway and is found by a passing motorist. He is subsequently shot dead from a considerable distance by Taylor, who earlier revealed he once shot wild boars from a helicopter. Kristy attempts to escape in the motorist's car, but the chase is short. Taylor forces the car from the road and kills her as she drags herself from the wreckage. He stows her in the boot of his vehicle and sets fire to the other car.
The action now cuts to Ben, whose fate until now was not revealed. He awakens to find himself nailed to a crossbeam in a mine shaft. Close by is a cage containing two savage dogs and two similarly crucified and partially-eaten corpses. He manages to extract himself and enters the camp in early daylight. From this it could be assumed that the scene is taking place at approximately the same time as Taylor is away from the camp chasing Kristy, but the timeline of the film is never clear. Ben escapes into the desert, eventually passing out beside a dirt road where he is rescued by two Swedish travelers and taken to safety. The final scene of the film reports, in mockumentary style, that the women’s' disappearance remains unsolved; Ben was accused of their murder, but acquitted.
The film closes with an image of Taylor walking into the sunset.
[edit] Basis in Reality
Wolf Creek was marketed as being "based on true events" in the same way as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Both films are actually fictional but draw inspiration from reality.
While not based on any single event, Mick Taylor's behaviour in Wolf Creek is reminiscent of some infamous Australian murderers. The murder methods portrayed are similar to those employed by Backpacker Murderer Ivan Milat during the early 1990s. Milat abducted backpackers, subjected them to torture and buried their bodies in a forest south of Sydney, New South Wales. Some of his victims were tied up and shot from various angles (the first torture scene in Wolf Creek is similar to this) and one was almost decapitated with a hunting knife. In addition, the abduction of British tourist Peter Falconio and the assault of his girlfriend Joanne Lees in July, 2001 by Bradley John Murdoch in the Northern Territory are also cited as influences. Murdoch's trial was still underway at the time of the film's initial release in Australia, and for this reason the Northern Territory court placed an injunction on the film's release there in the belief that it could influence the outcome of the proceedings.
Wolf Creek is set in a real location; however, the actual meteorite crater location is called "Wolfe Creek", and is located in northern Western Australia. It is believed to be the second largest meteorite crater in the world. The movie was almost entirely filmed in South Australia, so most of the shots in the movie at Wolf Creek are not located at the real Wolfe Creek. The aerial shots of the crater in the movie show the genuine Wolfe Creek crater.
[edit] Reception
| Ratings | |
|---|---|
| Australia: | R 18+ |
| Canada (Brit.Col): | 18A |
| Canada (Alberta): | 18A |
| Canada (Manitoba): | 18A |
| Canada (Ontario): | 18A |
| Canada (Maritime): | 18A |
| Canada (Quebec): | 18+ |
| Canada (Home Vid.): | 18A |
| Germany: | 18 |
| Singapore: | M18 |
| United Kingdom: | 18 |
| United States: | R |
Wolf Creek opened on 151 screens around Australia and took AU$1.225 million in its first weekend, making it the number one film for the weekend. The film grossed over £1,500,000 in the UK, an impressive return for a low-budget horror film. It has taken an equally impressive US$13,000,000 in the US so far.
Despite the film's commercial success, it has received a mixed reception from critics. Some critics were deeply offended by the film's brutality, while others praised it for its unorthodoxy and daringness. Critic Roger Ebert gave it a rare zero stars rating, saying, "There is a line and this movie crosses it ... I wanted to walk out of the theatre and keep on walking".[1] Seattle Times movie critic Moira Macdonald said that Wolf Creek was the first movie she ever walked out on. She called watching the movie "punishment" and wondered how someone's real death inspired this "entertainment". However, it received some fantastic reviews in the British press, with The Independent praising its departure from the generic rules of the horror film.[2] Notoriously hard to impress Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw awarded it 4/5 stars.[3] Time Out said "by making us feel the pain, Greg McLean’s ferocious, taboo-breaking film tells us so much more about how and why we watch horror movies".[4] They admitted, however, that the movie was not for everyone. Also film magazines such as Empire and Total Film gave the film 4/5. Fangoria called it the scariest film of the year.
James Berardinelli from Reelviews gave the film 3 stars out of 4, saying that he was "a little mystified by the strong negative reaction the film has received in some quarters." He goes on to mention "To slam Wolf Creek as a 'sadistic celebration of pain and cruelty' (as Roger Ebert did) is to misunderstand the genre...If the film evokes squeamishness, it has done its job. You're not supposed to sit through a film like this placidly munching popcorn. The reaction is intended to be visceral."
Acclaimed film director/writer Quentin Tarantino called it the scariest film he had ever seen.[citation needed] Robert Rodriguez also liked it enough that John Jarratt was asked and agreed to be in Tarantino's next short film Death Proof alongside Rodriguez' offering called Planet Terror in the film Grind House. He has since being inexplainably dropped from the project.
In Australia, many patrons reportedly left showings of Wolf Creek because of the graphic violence.
[edit] Possible Sequel
According to The Herald Sun, Greg McLean has written a sequel. [5]
[edit] DVD
As with the theatrical release, although Wolf Creek is an Australian movie the DVD was released in the United Kingdom first, on 16 January 2006, like an increasing number of films going straight from cinema to recording. In America only two DVDs were released: the theatrical cut, and another with two deleted scenes restored. This latter was released as "unrated", a sales term often used in the American DVD market to imply that the release contains more footage than the theatrical release, although it is not a special edition or director's cut.
[edit] References
- Wolf Creek's killer weekend (Nov 7, 2005). Sydney Morning Herald.
- Wolf Creek banned in NT
[edit] External links
- Wolf Creek at the Internet Movie Database
- Wolf Creek official Australian web site
- Wolf Creek official American web site
- Wolf Creek official United Kingdom web site
- Interview with John Jarratt (Mick).
- Wolf Creek movie review by DreadCentral.com
- PopMatters review (12/2005)
- Google Video of the Wolf Creek movie trailer
