Wolf Creek is a 2005 Australian horror film written, co-produced and directed by Greg McLean. The story revolves around three backpackers who find themselves held captive by a serial killer in the Australian outback. 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. This film earned an R rating for strong realistic violence and foul language. While the film is loosely inspired by the Backpacker murders that took place in the 1990s, it was marketed as being "based on true events". It was nominated for seven AFI awards, including Best Director.
Plot
Two English 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 50000 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 (John 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 Mick 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. Mick 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 and feet together, and as night falls she discovers Mick torturing Kristy by shooting at her, tormenting her and sexually abusing her (he was threatening to cut her breasts off). She sets the group's car alight to cause a distraction and, as Mick is busy putting out the fire, goes to help Kristy. Liz then attempts to shoot Mick with one of his own guns, but the bullet merely grazes his neck and leaves him unconscious, although this is not apparent immediately. The women flee the camp with Mick's truck (the one he used to tow them at the beginning), as they do so the two realize he is alive after all. They soon stop at the cliff of a ravine and realizing the killer is now behind them, the pair attempt to outwit him by pushing their vehicle off the cliff. After narrowly avoiding Mick, 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 Mick'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 Mick "rescuing" other travellers stranded at Wolf Creek in almost identical circumstances to her own. She realises Mick is a serial predator. She then picks up another camera which turns out to be Ben's. She watches the footage which reveals that Mick had been following them for some time. She gets into a car and attempts to start it but Mick shows up in the back seat, announces himself with a haunting 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"). Mick mentions that this method of torture was used in the Vietnam war. Paralyzed from the neck down, Liz soon dies from blood loss.
By dawn, Kristy has reached a tarred highway and is found by a passing motorist. He goes to grab a blanket from the boot but is distracted by a bullethole in his flask, then he is subsequently shot dead (a bullet though the head/eye) from an impressive distance by Mick, who earlier claimed he once shot water buffalo from a helicopter. Kristy attempts to escape in the motorist's car, but the chase is short. As Mick starts beside Kristy he teases her from his car but she rams into him, knocking him off the road. Mick then exits his car and proceeds to shoot out one of her tires with a high-powered rifle and cause her car to crash and roll over. Mick 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 her hapless rescuer 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 mock crucifix in a mine shaft. Close by is a cage containing two savage dogs and two mostly-eaten corpses, also 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 Mick 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 Ben's case was not strong enough against Mick and the women's disappearance remains unsolved; Ben was kept in police custody for four months but was later cleared of all suspicion, and that Ben Mitchell still lives in South Australia. The film ends with an image of Taylor walking into the sunset; his silhouette gradually fades, implying that he is still out there and doing the same thing.
Cast and characters
Basis in reality
US poster for
Wolf Creek.
Wolf Creek was marketed as being "based on true events", in the same way as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was. Both films were in actuality works of fiction although Wolf Creek and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre were inspired by true events; the Australian Backpacker Murders and Ed Gein respectively.
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 notorious 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 the movie, a sign indicates that the mining site the killer brings his victims to belongs to the "Navitalim Mining Company"; "Navitalim" is Ivan Milat's name transposed and reversed.
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 movie theaters in 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 grossed $16,188,180 on American screens, while also garnering an extra $11,574,468 overseas, bringing the total gross to US$27,762,648.[1] Overall, the film was a large financial success, considering the mere AU$1,000,000 budget used to make the movie.
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".[2] 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.[3] Notoriously hard to impress Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw awarded it 4/5 stars.[4] 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".[5] 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. At rottentomatoes.com, Wolf creek has a 53% 'rotten' rating based on 105 reviews.
See also
References
Sources
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