Overall Rating
  Awesome: 21.43%
Worth A Look: 34.29%
Average: 10.71%
Pretty Bad: 11.43%
Total Crap: 22.14%
7 reviews, 98 user ratings
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| Wolf Creek |
by Scott Weinberg
"'Based on a true story!' - except for all the nasty stuff we just made up."
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SCREENED AT THE 2005 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL: The Australian horror flick "Wolf Creek" claims to be 'based on actual fact' - yet it offers at least two murder scenes that, as far as anyone in Australia knows, never really happened! Sure, I could write a screenplay about three horny teenagers who went missing, but if I use their deaths as nothing more than cheap, gory horror flick fodder, aren't I being just a little bit too exploitative?But that's not even the worst of Wolf Creek's crimes. The biggest problem is that of sheer, simple boredom. This is a movie that wanders around aimlessly for well over an hour before finally getting to the gristle. And then those moments of shock and terror are handled in such obvious and perfunctory fashion that you may be a little bit annoyed for even waiting around that long.
Here we're offered two young gals and a guy, recent graduates who aim to take off to a massive ol' crater site for a vacation full of romance and adventure. Suffice to say they get very little of one and a whole lot of the other. After their car breaks down the trio is met by a grizzled ol' outback type, one they off-handedly refer to as a "Crocodile Dundee" type. (I know a few Aussies, and none of 'em would ever refer to one of their own as a "Crocodile Dundee." Only Americans are that clueless.)
Anyway, turns out that their savior is not a helpful outback fella, but a vicious murderer who delights in the torture of his victims. So after about 65 minutes of character stuff and rambly set-up, we get a few scenes of "stalk, hide, stalk, hide, scream" and some really nasty murders. Whether or not any of the victims manage to survive this nightmare, I won't say. But suffice to say you'll be walking out of the theater with more unanswered questions than grim answers.
Clearly aiming for some sort of Texas Chainsaw Massacre vibe (and failing pretty miserably), director Greg McLean manages only to exploit a few tales of true-life tragedy in order to deliver a couple of sincerely nasty kill scenes. Were Wolf Creek really about the tragedy of these missing kids, it would pack in some real desperation or emotion amongst the back-loaded carnage. Instead, the film feels like an unseemly attempt to wring a new horror franchise out of somebody else's dead children.
Take the film's nastiest dispatch. (Let's just say it involves a machete and someone's spine.) In a fictional horror movie, this could be an absolute highlight; a gruesome murder that takes place during the film's grim finale. But when you think back and realize that there's no evidence of this crime and that there were no witnesses, the kill feels a whole lot uglier than just what's onscreen. Fictionally sensationalizing a young girl's brutal murder leaves a bad taste in one's mouth, and this is coming from a guy who absolutely adores nasty horror movies!
To be fair, McLean clearly has some chops as a director. His camera peers down on the unforgiving Australian outback with a palpable sense of doom and gloom. The movie is shot is a dry and handsome fashion, which helps to keep the flick afloat during the first two interminable acts. And once the cat-and-mouse craziness kicks in, Wolf Creek exhibits a tight-knuckled intensity that would do wonders for a screenplay that isn't this malnourished.As a whole, "Wolf Creek" is two parts yawnfest and one part familiar thrill-ride. It's nasty for plain old nasty's sake, which normally would be a pretty solid endorsement for a low-budget horror flick. But by hanging his hat on the "based on a true story" conceit, Mr. McLean manages to paint himself into a corner. Were "Wolf Creek" really 'about' a rash of young Aussies gone missing, it wouldn't delight in the made-up murders so leeringly, and if it really was interested in being a balls-to-the-wall horror-fest, the flick wouldn't be so consistently boring.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=11249&reviewer=128
originally posted: 02/04/05 07:28:09
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For more in the Australian series, click here.
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2005 Sundance Film Festival. For more in the 2005 Sundance Film Festival series, click here.
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USA
25-Dec-2005 (R)
DVD: 11-Apr-2006
UK
N/A
Australia
03-Nov-2005
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