Wolf Creek Movie Review

Being a horror fan has never been easy, and today is no exception. After seeing Wolf Creek I contemplated committing horror movie suicide by selling off my prized DVD collection and buying a Dodge Caravan. After eating some dinner, and reflecting a bit, I've decided against the DVD sale, but that Caravan still seems like a good idea.

Why did Wolf Creek make me (even if only briefly) angry with horror? I've seen plenty of slash-trash this year and was never thrown into a quarter-life-crisis like this. In fact, even with the historic film let downs of 2005 like Saw 2 and Land of the Dead, I never felt the full force of being completely denied pleasure and hope that the next horror flick I went to go see would be a reawakening of brilliance in horror. Wolf Creek did it, it killed my expectations for the horror genre.

Blame the MTV'isms that have taken over cinema, the audiences who waste their money by supporting films they should be sticking up their noses at, and the filmmakers for not understanding that people are smarter and deserve more than blood gluttony and sadism. Of course, a spewing of innards here and there followed by a close up headshot J.F.K. style is more than welcome, in the right context that is.

The characters in Wolf Creek are three youngsters on a beach vacation somewhere in western Australia. They buy a car, have it checked by a mechanic, and decide to drive across the outback on a sight seeing and pot smoking vacation before they end up back on the east coast. For the entire first reel we are forced to watch as the trio laughs, smokes pot, and camps out nightly. One afternoon, they run into trouble as their car and watches quit working after they explore a meteor crater.

The guy tells a story about a man who saw a UFO and how the craft had some kind of power on it that made his car die. It just so happens, that is exactly what occurs to machines around the crater! They become further spooked by the coincidence later that night right before they go to sleep in the car. Bright lights start coming toward them, and they become scared that it is an alien. Soon it becomes clear that it is a car containing a man, and their fears are forgotten. The man offers to tow them back to his place "south a ways" from where they are stuck. They accept, and are on the way. They will soon learn that the guy is a total nutbag as they end up being tortured and have a very difficult time making any good decisions about their safety. That's the gist of the film.

No person in their right mind would allow some sleazy old weirdo to tow their car back to some deserted place in the middle of the night. What gets me more, beware for spoilers will follow, is what happens to them after they are drugged and tortured by the madman. One of the girls wakes up and frees herself, only to find her friend being abused within a shed nearby. After a prolonged sequence of torture and perversion, she decides that she must do something to distract the man so that she can go in and save her friend. After a few minutes, the man returns from dealing with the fire to torture her friend with a very large knife but she is there with a gun and gets a shot off that grazes his neck, causing him to lose consciousness. In the same room are the remains of a former torture victim, proving that the psycho was not playing games. When the man collapses, she cannot get off another shot with the rifle and just decides to hit him in the ass with it a couple times.

Give me a break. There is a knife sitting two inches from her and she's not going to finish off the guy who was just torturing and raping her best friend? Instead, they get into his car, but have to go back to get the keys from his pocket! She's terrified he will wake up at any moment, yet she does not kill him then either... and isn't her new boyfriend still unaccounted for? No worries, they get in the truck and the psycho amazingly wakes up and starts shooting the rifle at them!

A car chase ensues, they have to ditch their car to make it look like they died in a crash, and decide to go back to the psycho's homestead to steal a new car. UGH! How many dumbass things can girls do to get themselves killed in movies? And the way they are tortured, again, is perverted and over the top sadism that has absolutely no value other than the sense of unease it envokes from watching some dirty old man hurt little girls. The women were brainless rag dolls throughout the film, almost never clever, and romp around through the second half like doped up vixens in an S&M stag film falling back into the killer's hands time and time again. This movie has more moments of "You stupid ass, don't do that!" than any movie I have seen, ever. So what about the boyfriend? He reappears to close the film and has his own "whatever" ending.

I didn't hate the film entirely, because there were a few moments where I thought it could have saved itself. The budding romance between the guy and one of the girls was a nice touch that unfortunately went nowhere and had nothing to do with the second half of the film. The girls were pretty, and although their lines were simple, they did a decent job of trying to bring some life to their characters, and have to be commended for being able to withstand the extreme torture sequences in the film. The young man in the film is a charismatic actor, but the shallowness of his character only requires a lot of smiling and short goofy comments.

I walked away from Wolf Creek feeling again cheated at the movies, a horror film without a brain, lots of body, but no brain... and that's not enough for me. Sure, blood and guts, screaming and gunfire can keep anyone's interest for a few minutes, but disappointment settles in when there is nothing more to it.

Lessons learned from Wolf Creek? Never let the killer sleep off his wounds, stick the jerk before he gets back up. If your friends suggest you save a few bucks by getting towed back to some strange guys place, say no thanks and wait for someone else. If you escape the killer's hideout and crash your car, don't go back for another one. And the last lesson, never buy a cheap used car to drive cross country, invest instead in a Dodge Caravan... it's a nice reliable vehicle that won't get you caught catching a tow and some torture from a crazy old dude on the side of the road sometime.



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