At the beginning of the Australian suspense thriller "Wolf Creek," the onscreen title states that 30,000 people are reported missing each year in the land down under, with ninety percent of them being found in the first month, with some of the rest never being seen again. That, coupled with the usual "based on true events" tagline sets the stage for this latest exercise in sadistic, cat and mouse thrills and chills. While competently staged and performed, it's just more of the same old, same old that we've seen countless times before and, if these low-budget flicks keeping turning a profit, will inevitably see again.
To be truthful, I have no idea who these kinds of movies are made for. The old slasher flicks, from "Halloween " to "Friday the 13th" and "Nightmare on Elm Street" were popular among the teens because while they may have offered up the scares and gore, there was something inherently campy about them. And the target audiences certainly seemed to enjoy watching the victims get their comeuppance (for having teenage sex, going into the room without turning the light on, or just being stupid, mean and/or ignorant).
In other words, viewers were in on the joke, thus -- at times -- rooting against the victims and for the villains who become cultural horror icons of sorts. With the turn to more graphic realism with films such as this offering and this year's earlier "High Tension," however, all of the fun has been bled away. If you get your jollies watching people being tortured, this might be the cat's meow, but for everyone else it will come off like a bad cat scratch, ugly, painful and something you'll otherwise want to avoid.
As in most such films, the plot is really just a throwaway element designed to introduce the characters -- and hopefully make us care about them and thus want them to avoid, survive or dispatch the killer -- and then the simple scenario that will fuel the rest of the pic. As penned by Greg McLean -- who also makes his feature directing debut -- the story shows us two European young women who meet up with a local Aussie and then set off for the other side of the country, stopping along the way to see the enormous meteorite crater in Wolf Creek National Park.
McLean sets up several scenarios along the way. The threesome -- we never really know how or why they've hooked up -- travel out into a very remote section of the Outback, thus meaning they're isolated from help. While it never plays or pans out the way it probably should have, we slightly wonder if the local guy might be the deranged kidnapper and killer, especially after he talks about weird events previously happening at the crater site. And when their car won't start and all of their watches are dead when they return after a several hour hike into and then out of the crater -- as night is falling -- we think, "Aha, he is the villain."
Embodying those three characters, Nathan Phillips, Cassandra Magrath and Kestie Morassi create believable if not entirely engaging personas. With the film sporting a bit of that "reality programming" air to it, they feel real, and the fact that audiences outside Australia are unlikely to recognize them gives the casting something of a fresh aura. But then John Jarratt shows up, and we immediately realize he's the boogeyman of choice, or at least figure he'll deliver them to the villain.
His character is the salty local who could be Robert Shaw's long lost Australian cousin, and we know from the moment that he offers to tow them back to his place to fix their "broken" car that things will only go downhill from there. While sitting around the campfire at night, he begins to show his true colors, and by the next morning the plot has fully established itself. From that point on, the various characters try to avoid him in true cat and mouse fashion.
I suppose if you've never seen a film like this before, it might give you the willies and/or keep you on the edge of your seat. Yet beyond the now requisite realistic looking and feeling torture and gore, there's nothing the rest of us haven't seen before. And there's just nothing novel or interesting enough with how McLean and his cast work the material to make it noteworthy.
If you're in the mood for a superb, tightly wrought and visually hypnotic Aussie thriller, check out "Dead Calm," the film that introduced Nicole Kidman to a worldwide audience. Now that's a suspenseful flick that only makes "Wolf Creek" feel like it's howling up a cinematic tributary without a big enough paddle. Adequately told and performed but too unoriginal and certainly not scary or suspenseful enough to warrant the unsavory sadism, this film rates as a 4 out of 10.
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