Aussie Horror

How does the horror genre begin? With a peaceful place. With a darker underbelly thriving beneath.

The allure of the Outback, with its long stretch of desert choked with drought, offers a totally alien atmosphere. The Australian Outback gives away to an unquiet calm.

This is one of the virtues for the film Wolf Creek. The newcomer director Greg McLean knows how to make mood. There’s just a hallowed, empty feeling. You don’t find anything except for a dead end. Literally.

Wolf Creek makes brilliant use of location shots. From the meteor crater to the desolate roads that shoots like a straight line. It’s a far cry from the metropolitan areas such as Adelaide. The cities seem safer. More at ease.

In the outback, there’s a vastness to it. When the sun dips below the horizon, it feels haunting, lonely. There’s a definite sense of horror weaving into the sandy grounds. There’s just miles of nothing.

Seemingly it reflects the soul of a serial killer simply called Mick. He’s a cold-hearted one. Just a killer with a friendly face. He is one with the desert. He drives a monster truck that can tow other cars into safety. Or his own type of haven.

The film takes a dark detour into the sadistic. When a trio of youngsters, two women and a man, find their car died in the middle of nowhere, they have no choice but to go with Mick. The Outback resident is willing to help out all too eagerly. He’s a good mechanic. He makes farting jokes. In many ways, he’s very human.

Yet he has a different face. The three-some find they have been brought to his hunting grounds. Where Mick fancies tortures, strips the bodies in Ed Gein style. The corpses hang in hidden wooden sheds. Mick carries knives and guns. He keeps hunting trophies. Dead people.

He unleashes terror on the three young people… Lizzy, Kristy and Ben. They find a true heart of darkness in the vast wilderness.

It’s a well-made film. There’s no doubt about it. There’s a meticulous craft in the film There’s a precaution of style in it. Each scene has an impending doom in it. The violence is gritty, real.

When the horror hits, it is gut-wrenching and terrible thing. You feel bad for these kids because you got to know them in the first hour of the film. Then they are stripped away from everything they knew that was safe in their world. They have stumbled into a different place where only pain exists. As the young Aussies find out.

I do like the slow, mind-bending build-up that makes a good horror film. The gore is confined to some crucial scenes: it feels disturbing because you’re watching like a helpless victim.

There’s one crucial scene with Lizzy who watches the torture of Kristy. As an audience we see through her eyes: we’re helpless like she is. It’s not a good feeling.

However, I’ve seen the same story in many movies before. It has the same plot as The Hills Has Eyes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre… also Devil’s Rejects and the Wrong Turn. I’ve seen the same plot in dozens of other stories. There’s always got to be some hick out there waiting to slice-and-dice his victims. I’ve seen it before. It’s nothing new. That’s Wolf Creek’s only downfall. It travels the same roads as other horror films have.

It’s still worth seeing. Especially for horror aficionados. Check it out at local video stores since it came out last Tuesday. There’s a certain quality that feels unnerving. Like the French film High Tension, a sister film that pushes gore over the edge, Wolf Creek film cuts away the innocence of humanity. And leaves the ruins of horror at our feet.

Try not to walk the street alone in places like this. You might run into someone you don’t like.