Wolf Creek (film)

Wolf Creek
File:Wolfcreek.jpg Official Poster for Wolf Creek
Directed by	Greg McLean
Written by	Greg McLean
Produced by	David Lightfoot Matt Hearn George Adams Martin Fabinyi Michael Gudinski Gary Hamilton
Starring	John Jarratt Cassandra Magrath Kestie Morassi Nathan Phillips
Cinematography	Will Gibson
Edited by	Jason Ballantine
Music by	Frank Tetaz
Distributed by	Darclight Films Dimension Films
Release date	December 25, 2005
Running time	99 min.
Country	Australia
Language	English
Budget	AU$1,380,000

Wolf Creek is a 2005 Australian horror film written, co-produced and directed by Greg McLean. It has strong themes of torture and murder. The film stars Cassandra Magrath, Kestie Morassi, John Jarratt, and Nathan Phillips. It was released in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland on September 16, 2005, on November 3, 2005 in Australia (apart from the Northern Territory), and on December 25, 2005 in the United States.

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 ton 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. After dark, a "Crocodile Dundee"-like character named Mick Taylor (Jarratt) comes upon them and offers to show 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 by cutting the cable ties that bind her hands together, and as night falls she discovers Mick torturing Kristy by shooting at her, tormenting her and sexually abusing her. She causes a distraction, and then attempts to shoot Mick with one of his own guns (catching the bullet in the side of his neck) but fails to kill him, although this is not apparent immediately. The women flee the camp. Hopelessly lost in the dark, they almost plunge over a cliff into a ravine. Realizing the killer is now behind them, the pair attempt to outwit him by pushing their vehicle off the cliff. After narrowly avoiding Taylor, who is now 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 five minutes.

Liz enters a garage and discovers Taylor's large stock of cars as well as an organized array of travellers’ possessions, including video cameras. She watches the playback on one of them and is horrified to see Taylor "rescuing" other travellers 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 then picks up another camera which turns out to be Ben's. She watches the footage and she sees Mick's truck at the gas station they were at earlier where some local rednecks had made rude comments about herself and Kristy, asking them if they would like to join them in a gang bang. He had been following them. 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 bowie knife. He then cuts off some of her fingers (mocking her using a pen knife to defend herself), severs her spinal cord (making what Mick calls "a head on a stick") and (presumably) tortures her to reveal the location of Kristy (violently incensed over his wrecked truck). Mick mentions that this method of torture was used in the Vietnam war.

By dawn, Kristy has reached a tarred highway and is found by a passing motorist. He is subsequently shot dead (first hit in his chest, then right in his eye) from a considerable distance by Taylor, who earlier revealed he once shot water buffalo from a helicopter. Kristy attempts to escape in the motorist's car, but the chase is short. Kristy forces Taylor's car from the road but Taylor proceeds to shoot out one of her tires and cause her car to crash. Taylor then drives up and kills her as she drags herself from the wreckage. He stows her in the boot of his vehicle along with the lifeless body of the hapless good samaritan 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 partially-eaten corpses, similarly crucified. 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 time line 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 travellers and taken to safety. The final scene of the film reports, in documentary style, that the women's disappearance remains unsolved; Ben was kept in police custody for four months but was later cleared of all suspicion.

The film closes with an image of Taylor walking into the sunset.

Cast and characters

• John Jarratt as Mick Taylor, the serial killer.
• Cassandra Magrath as Liz Hunter. Liz Hunter (born Elizabeth Hunter) is a British friend of Ben Mitchell and Kristy Earl. She is Mitchell's love interest. She is murdered by Taylor. It is stated that the Australian Federal Police never found any sign of either Kristy Earl or Liz Hunter.
• Kestie Morassi as Kristy Earl. Kristy Earl is one of the two British friends of Ben Mitchell. She is killed when Earl is driving away in an old man's car, but Taylor shoots her back wheel with a sniper rifle, she is then killed when she drags herself out of the vehicle and Taylor shoots her in the head.
• Nathan Phillips as Ben Mitchell. Mitchell is the only survivor in the movie after the mass murders of his two friends. He is from Sydney, Australia as seen in the movie. After his escape from "Mick Taylor's Hideout", Mitchell travels through the Great Victoria Desert ending up on the side of a road, when two Swedish travellers find him and bring him back to civilization. He now lives in South Australia, as said in the ending.

Basis in Reality

Wolf Creek was marketed as being "based on true events", in the same way as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Both films are actually works of fiction.

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 the Belanglo State Forest, southwest 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 under way 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 the second largest meteorite crater in the world from which meteorite fragments have been recovered. The movie was almost entirely filmed in South Australia; however the aerial shots of the crater in the movie show the genuine Wolfe Creek crater.

Reception

Wolf Creek opened on 151 screens around Australia on November 3, 2005 (the film had previously been shown at a number of film festivals) and took AU$1.225 million in its first weekend, making it the number one film for the weekend. In the United Kingdom, the film was given a modest release on September 16, 2005, and grossed £1,500,000, which was an impressive return for a horror movie. The film opened on Christmas Day 2005 in the United States and ultimately grossed roughly $16,000,000 on American screens. Overall, the film was a large financial success, considering the mere AU$1,000,000 budget used to make the movie.

File:Wolfcreekposterbig.jpg

Official US promotional poster for the film.

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, "It is a film with one clear purpose: To establish the commercial credentials of its director by showing his skill at depicting the brutal tracking, torture and mutilation of screaming young women ... I wanted to walk out of the theatre and keep on walking". 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". Nevertheless, it received some very positive reviews in the British press, with The Independent praising its departure from the generic rules of the horror film genre. Notoriously hard to impress Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw awarded it 4/5 stars. 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". They admitted, however, that the movie was not for everyone. The film magazines 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.

Sources

• Wolf Creek's killer weekend (November 7, 2005). Sydney Morning Herald.
• Wolf Creek banned in NT

See also

• South Australian Film Corporation

External links

• Wolf Creek at IMDb
• 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
• Wolf Creek at the National Film and Sound Archive