Wolf Creek (Greg McLean, 2005)

[rs98762001]

Besides, if you had been going through a situation like that, you wouldn't exactly have a clear mind.

That's always my favorite excuse for excusing stupid behavior in a movie.

[The Invunche]

Especially since Liz starts out by making a quite clever distraction to make Mick leave Kristy alone.

[HerrSchreck]

I have compiled answers to the most frequently asked questions I see on this board about how there are simultaneously zillions of campsites all around the outback, but at the same time the outback is huge and you can run forever without finding any civilization whatsoever. It gets old when people ask them over and over, so here's the ones that I seem to see often. If you have any others I can try and answer them too since I've never been to the outback but people tell me lots of things about it.

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Besides, if you had been watching a film like this, you wouldn't exactly have a clear mind.

1. Why didn't the girls just run on foot instead of having Liz go back to get a car? They were in the middle of nowhere, and had no idea where they were. The outback is huge, they could be running for a very long time before finding another road or any civilization for that matter. I'm not from Australia, but I've heard that there are thousands of (campsites) like that all around the outback. The outback is an enourmous place, and tracking down just one campsite would be very, very difficult.

[Lino]

If you can't figure that shit out on your own you are probably stupid enough for it to change your opinion.

Well, here I draw the line, laddy. Stop your shallow remarks at me right now! And besides, I didn't change my opinion - I still love this film no matter what. I just posted that quote for the sake of trivia. Are we clear now? Good. And go scratch that sore pussy elsewhere. With your banana.

[The Invunche]

Work that banana, Ben.

[ben d banana]

Ooh Annie, I love it when you're indignant.

Admittedly I take shots at you, and not solely because I find Tore my Anus (as a female I know calls her) pathetic. However, earlier in this thread I merely disagreed with your perception that Devil's Rejects was a watered down compromise due to its lack of relentless gore, and later I merely asked if you had seen Twentynine Palms. My final comment was indeed a dig at your use of the phrase "helpful info", but I certainly did not imply that you disliked Wolf Creek and your weak will was swayed by some master of the obvious' post on IMDB.

Still, at least you're not the touchiest little baby here.

[HerrSchreck]

Once I pushed an adorable, shyly charismatic blue-eyed 3 year old girl with naturally curly blond hair and excellent singing voice off a cliff (but only because a girl I know did too).

[ben d banana]

[HerrSchreck]

To see what's going on above the knee:

[Lino]

Meet Mrs. ben d banana

[The Invunche]

You can make fun of Ben's girlfriend but we can't make fun of Gory Anus? That doesn't seem fair.

[ben d banana]

Fools seldom differ.

[Lino]

Talk to the hand!

Last night I showed Wolf Creek to a couple of friends of mine and their reactions were thus: the girl had to pause the DVD halfway because she was getting too freaked out with the whole business (and she is a jaded horror fan). The guy thought that he was getting himself into another teen horror movie at first but when the movie turned brutal, he was caught completely off guard and at the end he said that it was one of the best movies of this genre that he had ever, ever seen. I wickedly smiled and nodded.

Two more fans to the list.

[denti alligator]

The horror film that deserves to be labeled "future classic" is Pulse.

Absolutely. That is a true horror movie, made by a brilliant filmmaker, that is both terrifying and thought-provoking. WOLF CREEK is cliched, pointless hack work. MacLean or whatever his name is needs to be strapped to a chair Alex-style with his eyelids opened and forced to watch Kiyoshi Kurosawa for a couple of years before anyone lets him handle a camera again.

What's Pulse?

(There are at least 4 films called "Pulse" at Netflix that are categorized as horror or thriller. Which one are you talking about? Sorry for the OT... Annie, I've added Wolf Creek, so we'll see in a few weeks if I can sit through it...)

[Michael]

Pulse is also called Kairo.

[ben d banana]

Talk to the hand!

You answer the phone "Wasssssssuuup?" too, right?

[miloauckerman]

I've always found it strange when the Devil's Rejects gets linked to the recent crop of gorefests. I avoided it the first weekend, assuming the same thing (and because 1000 Corpses was terrible), but when I watched it, I don't recall all that much gore - some blood, but not the attempts at shock you find in Hostel, Saw, Wolf Creek, etc..

I (stupidly) sat through all three of those in the theater, hoping to find something redeeming in them, but it was impossible. I was somewhat turned off by their content, but I was more put off by how genuinely, insultingly stupid I found each one. I can't get excited about cinematic sadism for sadism's sake.

I think I would have been more interested if they hadn't been so safe - just enough icky stuff to shock the kids, but never really pushing any boundaries or telling me a story I cared to hear (and yeah, the logic issues in Wolf Creek are huge).

[John Cope]

Thought I'd add my two cents to this as I just saw it. I guess my reaction is a variant on what Mr. Sausage wrote earlier. I actually thought this was a well produced, well considered picture in pure aesthetic terms. My problem is that it depressed me ferociously for a number of reasons. I agree with those who appreciated the slow build up and the establishment of empathy for the kids. There is much to appreciate here: the steady rhythm, the escalation of legitimate dread, the nuanced relationships of the protagonists, the compositions meant to suggest the gradual embrace of separation and loneliness as well as the contrasting natural beauty, but ultimately it is all at the service of nothing but a depiction of brutality. You can call that real if you want and obviously it is effective or I would not have reacted as I did but, yes, the question for me at least does return to an ancient one: just what is the value in this experience? What is the value in the effort to communicate it? Of course it's uncompromising but not in a way that forces an acknowledgement or greater understanding of human despair and base level futility. It doesn't put it in any kind of context. It demonstrates little interest in anything other than the assumed integrity of its bleak and uncompromised vision. And I speak as someone who thought High Tension was brilliant (including its much derided final reveal, which is as politically daring as Zombie's flirtation with mock heroics and the conventional associations audiences make with renegades in exploitation films).

I pondered this question after I watched Wolf Creek: Is this really a more honest film than Hostel? Many would argue that it is, of course, because it does not traffic in obvious caricatures and seems to have a clearer intent, thus one with supposedly more integrity. But, with the exception of one specific scene (which felt more stumbled upon than anything else), Hostel is an obvious freak/geek show with little pretension to a standard of excellence. It also builds toward its climactic moment of audience pleasing vengeance with furious precision. That moment is what the audience really wants and Roth knows it and is unashamed to hand it over. Hostel does not depress because it's completely ludicrous and no one could possibly care about the cut out character representations. Hence, they are tortured for our amusement. The scene I referred to earlier in which a rich American briefly speaks of his need to ramp up the sensory experiences he has become addicted to recalls Bigelow's Strange Days in its bracing confrontational acknowledgement of what drives the sensibility behind the audiencing of such shit. The torturers are quite obviously our proxies in Hostel. It could even be said to be a back handed critique. Wolf Creek, meanwhile, wants us to observe separated from the implication of participation--it doesn't even bring the issue up in any meaningful way. Our empathy rests firmly with the characters here in a way that it does not in Roth's film but is that honest? Does it matter, in other words? Can it ever justify this? Is it enough? Is it even authentic or is it, in fact, a false, duplicitous stance meant to assuage our own implicit participation and make it ultimately palatable as a "powerful horror movie". Maybe the characters we care about are just a distraction, a salvific one taking the unpleasant edge off our willingness to continue to watch?

If you believe animality is and always will be man's default position than I guess this one's for you (though I'd recommend Greenaway as someone much more serious about the implications of that philosophy). If you believe consciousness and understanding can offer other alternatives, equally legitimate and more expansive, then take a pass on Wolf Creek.

[Jay]

Oh John, John, John...

These kids were obviously asking for it. As a psychotic killer who resides - as all psychotic killers do - in deserts adorned with the husks of old cars and major appliances sprouting tufts of yellowed grass, I find your post highly offensive. Maybe if we were shown a little more love we wouldn't have to resort to the "brutality" in which you find so little value.

Now that's a knife...

[soma]

Wow, this thread is certainly enlightening as to the various "moral" stances of some of the board members. I perfectly understand people not liking films such as Wolf Creek. But why the need to make catch-cry remarks and pigeonhole viewers who did actually enjoy it? These unbelievably shallow minded, knee-jerk reactions are in my eyes, far more morally fucked than the fictional violent constructs of a film such as Wolf Creek.

Whatever happened to enjoying the thrill of being scared? Haven't audiences enjoyed this feeling since 1922's Nosferatu?! In an image-saturated media age where real life violence is far more threatening than its on-screen counterpart, audiences (and especially those schooled in a long tradition of horror cinema) are naturally desensitised. If it takes a lot more to really scare someone then how long did you think it would be before a director or directors upped the ante? And is that such a bad thing? This is after all, fictional entertainment. And I'm sure Nosferatu was just as terrifying as Wolf Creek in its day.

There are many horror films that deliver intense violence, gore, spectacle and nothing else, but this is not one of those. Yes it is violent. Yes it is shocking. But it is also made with great craft. It fulfils its primary genre requirement - to terrify - and in its artistic integrity, alienated sense of place, brooding existentialism and lyrical deconstruction see it, like all good films, actually transcend its genre. A hard slap in the face to the recent Hollywood-bred school of loud shocks / jump in your seat and one-dimensional teen horror, this film is beautifully restrained - with stunning cinematography to match.

I for one think it is the best horror film since Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining', and thoroughly agree with the great review over at Slant Magazine. If you follow the often-brilliant but always discerning words of Ed and Nick at Slant you will know they have harsh standards when it comes to genre material. Yet they both rated Wolf Creek in their Top 10 films of 2005. The same two critics unanimously voted Terrence Malick's ethereal and poetic period romance, 'The New World', the best film of the year. I for one salute them.

[gubbelsj]

Another interesting aspect to the new crop of torture / horror pictures is that the attention to bloody details, to dragging each death out as long and painfully as possible, is actually the morally preferable approach, or at least morally preferable to other horror and action movies. Films like Wolf Creek at least don't let the audience off easily with quick, painless deaths - we suffer through each death scene, because they take death so seriously. Death hurts, physically and emotionally. The quickly dispatched faceless victim of so many sci fi/action flicks is a cartoon version of mortality, and I suspect here is where many people become desensitized to violence. I can't say I enjoy the torture genre, but would suggest many of them have more of a moral center than plenty of other, and far less bloody, films.

[Mr Sausage]

These unbelievably shallow minded, knee-jerk reactions are in my eyes, far more morally fucked than the fictional violent constructs of a film such as Wolf Creek.

But aren't knee-jerk reactions precisely what this kind of film depends upon?

[soma]

But aren't knee-jerk reactions precisely what this kind of film depends upon?

How do you mean? To create buzz as the latest "video nasty"? Or something else?

I guess my point is that Wolf Creek is no more shocking than say 'Straw Dogs', or 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre', or 'Last House On The Left', all produced over 30 years ago. It has a grim sense of stark realism befitting of a more modern release, but as mentioned a modern audience is far more desensitised. I find it entirely hypocritical that the critics who shun Wolf Creek in disgust are the same critics who applaud 'Jaws', 'Night Of The Living Dead' and 'The Shining' as terrifying masterpieces. Have they forgotten so soon the thrill of being scared? The lure of a well crafted genre piece? Or is their reaction more simply the fact that they were scared, terrified in fact - and quickly grew uneasy with being shoved so far out of their cozy middle-age comfort zone?

It's the age old argument of church, government or conservative populous deciding what is and isn't moral. It's plainly ridiculous, as ridiculous as calling Monty Python's 'The Holy Grail' immoral because it's too funny, or riffs on a sacred subject matter. This is a genre film. It's damn scary - it's meant to be... and it's about time someone made one that actually is. That is was made with craft and a certain level of artistry, all the more power to it.

[The Invunche]

I believe there were several people in this thread who disliked the movie for the completely idiotic behavior of it's character (bad writing), rather than the violent/nasty content. This movie is in no way above the bad slasher movies of the 80's where teens would "fight" an unseen killer by splitting up and going alone into dark rooms. It's looks better though.

Please don't make us out to be religious moralistic crusaders.

[Michael]

soma, you're missing the main reason why some of us hate Wolf Creek. It's not the violence. It's just that it's so badly directed.

Read this thread again....carefully.