John Selman
April 30, 2006
MED231

Wolf Creek

Part 1

Director-                    Greg McLean
Screenwriter-                        Greg McLean
Producer-                   Greg McLean
Producer-                   David Lightfoot
Composer-                 Francois Tetaz
Distributed by-          Darclight Films Dimension Films
Director of Photography-Brandon Trost
Production Company-The True Crime Channel Pty Ltd
Cinematographer-    Will Gibson
Editor-                        Jason Ballantine

Cast (in order of first billed)
John Jarratt-                Mick Taylor
Cassandra Magrath-    Liz Hunter
Kestie Morassi-          Kristy Earl
Nathan Phillips-          Ben Mitchell
Gordon Poole-                        Old Man
Guy O’Konnell-         Car Salesman
Phil Stevenson-           Mechanic
Geoff Revell-              Petrol Attendant
Andy McPhee-           Bazza
Aaron Sterns-              Bazza’s Mate
Michael Moody-        Bazza’s Old Mate
Andrew Reimer-         Flashback Dad
Vicki Reimer-              Flashback Mom
Isabella Reimer-          Flashback Girl
David Rock-                Irish Backpacker
Provided by imdb.com
Release Date:
Australia:                    November 3, 2005 (except Northern Territory)
United States:             December 25, 2005
UK and Ireland:          September 16, 2005

Box Office:
Australia:        First week- AU$1.225 million
United States: First week- $4.9 million (Total box office- 15.94 million)
UK:                 First week- £1.5 million

Budget:          AU$ 2 million
Country:        Australia
Runtime:       99 minutes
Language:      English
Rating:           Australia: R, USA: R, Brazil: 16, Singapore: NC-16, New Zealand: R18, Canada: 18A, Norway: 18, Portugal: M/16, UK: 18, Finland: K-18 Ireland: 18
Awards:

Academy of science fiction, fantasy and horror films, USA 2006
                        Nominated

Australian Film Institute 2005
Nominated

IF Awards 2005
      Nominated

Sundance Film Festival 2005
Nominated

Provided by Wikipedia.org

Bibliography of Interviews with Filmmakers

It was hard to find interviews with any of the filmmakers because most of them haven’t been involved in making many movies.  I was able to find a few interviews with director Greg McLean because this movie was projected to be a success.

http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/feature.jsp?id=149626
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/topnews.php?id=12465
http://www.horror.com/php/article-1055-1.html

Bibliography of Reviews

Since this is a new film there aren’t any books written on it, but there are reviews on line.

Roger Ebert gave the movie zero stars and wrote this review: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051222/REVIEWS/51220004

Moira Macdonald a writer for the Seattle Times said that it was the first movie she had ever walked out on. 

Director/ writer Quentin Tarantino said that it was the scariest film that he had ever seen.

Assortment of film reviews

http://www.infilm.com.au/reviews/wolfcreek.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Creek_(film)
http://dvd.monstersandcritics.com/archive/dvdarchive.php/Wolf_Creek/7036
http://www.wolfcreekthemovie.com/site/
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wolf_creek/
http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/review.php?id=460
http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/678/678075p1.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416315/

On-Line Presence

The information that I found on line showed the movie in two different respects.  There was the group of people that loved the movie and thought it was one of the scariest and ground breaking movies they had seen in a long time, like Quentin Tarantino, as mentioned above.  They felt that the gore in the movie helped them to feel what the characters must have been going though.  The other group of people though that the movie crossed the line with the amount of gore in movie and they hated it, like Moira Macdonald, as mentioned above.  Most of which said they didn’t even stay though the whole movie they were so turned off.  There are many reviews, as listed above, that talk about both sides of this.  The fact that this film was projected to do well at the Sundance Film Festival also created talk about the film.  The reviews were as mixed then as they are today. 

Part 2

Synopsis

The film starts out with three main characters, two girls Cassandra Magrath (Liz), Kestie Morassi (Kristy) and a guy Nathan Phillips (Ben).  The two girls are originally from Britain but are traveling around Australia.  In there travels the meet Ben and decide to travel with him to wolf creek, which is the sight of a meteor crater.  When they return back to their car after their hike they find that their watches have stopped and that the car will not start.  They decide to sleep in the car for the night because it is now late and getting dark.  To their surprise a man, John Jarratt (Mick), drives along and offers to tow their car back to his shop were he will fix the car for free.  Since they are low on money they decide to go with Mick.  He gains their trust and gives them water that has some sort of drug in it which causes them to pass out. 
In the morning you see Liz wake up and she realizes that she is tied up in a storage room.  The plot doesn’t advance any until it becomes later in the day and starts to get dark.  We as the viewer are just suppose to ignore the fact that she can’t figure anything out tell it gets dark again.  So that night Liz figures out how to cut the ropes that were bound around her hands and feet.  She gets out and it’s dead quiet, there’s no music and you are left wondering if the man is going to find her or what’s going to happen next.  She hears Kristy screaming so she goes to help, and this is probably the most disturbing part of the film because you get to see what he has done to his previous victims and what he plains on doing to them.  Liz is eventually able to get Kristy out and they shoot Mick with a gun and then steal one of his cars.  The girls don’t know where they are going so they end up running into a dead end, a cliff.  They next thing you know Mick is right there behind them in his car trying to find them.  The girls run back towards the house because they know that he has more cars there.  Liz tells Kristy to stay away from the house and if she’s not back in a little while to go look for help. 
Liz finds some cars but she also finds Mick’s relics of all the people he has killed.  In the process of looking at the relics Mick is able to sneak in and hide in one of the cars.  It just happens that the car he hides in, out of 20 or so cars, is the very one that Liz tries to take.  He ends up stabbing her in the back in a place that isn’t going to killer so Mick can get information out of her.  You then see Kristy running for help; she is able to get a car on the road to stop for her.  The man gets out of the car to find out what’s the matter and Mick shot him with his sniper rifle.  It doesn’t explain how he finds out were Kristy is and how he knew to bring a sniper rifle with him, you are once again not suppose to think about that.  Kristy gets into the man’s car and starts to drive away but Mick is able to shoot her as well and kills her. 
It is at this point that we finally see Ben who is just now waking up from being drugged.  There is no explanation why it has taken him so long to wake up or why he hasn’t escaped because once they actually show him he is able to get untied really easily.  Once he gets loose he starts to run and passes out in the middle of a field close to the road.  A couple of hikers pass by and found Ben there and get him medical attention.  This is how the movie ends, there is some writing that describes what happens next and how the people thought that maybe Ben had actually done it all and killed Kristy, but later he was found not guilty.  They don’t explain, even though you can guess, what happens to Liz or if they ever find Mick.

Critical Uptake
As I talked about before, since the movie is so new there hasn’t been all that much talk about the movie.  The things that people were talking about when the movie came out last year and are still talking about now is the fact that the movie is really gory.  Some critics like Roger Ebert think that the film is too graphic and that it was a horrible movie “by showing his skill at depicting the brutal tracking, torture and mutilation of screaming young women. When the killer severs the spine of one of his victims and calls her "a head on a stick," I wanted to walk out of the theater and keep on walking.” (Ebert, 2005)  The other side believes that this film is unique and will set the standard for horror movies in the future.  They believe that the movie was graphic because it needed to be in order to really let the viewer get involved in the plot and minds of the characters.  Not much has changed over the past year; some people still think that the movie is too graphic while the others think it is one of the best horror films they have seen in a long time.

Film in relation to prior work
Prior to this film the director Greg McLean had only created one independent film so there is really nothing to compare this work too.  It might be important to note that he is actually just finishing up another film Rouge.  It will be interesting to see if he has as much success with this film as he did with Wolf Creek.  John Jarratt hasn’t really been in any other movies but will have a role in Greg McLean’s new movie.  The rest of the staring cast have, for the most part, only had appearances on TV shows and have never started in any movie.  Most of them haven’t even played major characters in a TV show.  So they were all break though actors and actresses.  So there’s really not much to compare there acting too.

Position in Australian Film
Using this film as an example of Australian films I would have to say that it shows that Australian films are making progress.  The fact that this film only had a budget of AU$ 2 million and was able to compete in the box office shows that Australian movies are getting better.  I say this because most Australian films have a hard time competing with films made in the United States, most Australian’s don’t even watch Australian films.  So when you have a movie like Wolf Creek become popular all over the world including the United States that shows that they are making better films.  Also, it is impressive that a good horror movie was made in Australia because Steve Neale says that the United States is leading the way for horror films and “the horror film has consistently been one of the most popular…of Hollywood genres.”(Neale, 2000)  So in order to have a horror film that many people call the best they have ever seen is a big deal, but the fact that it never reached number one in the box office also shows that it needs some work.  Another example of the need for improvement is the controversy over this movie.  Some people think that it’s to graphic and gory and that they movie goes too far.  In order to become more popular films from Australia might need to become less controversial, but this might mean loosing what it is to be an Australian film, so that might be tricky. 

Genre
Wolf Creek is obviously a horror film.  Early horror films were characterized as horror because they contained monsters, but that isn’t the case anymore.  Steve Neale says that now “the source of horror in the horror film is not necessarily a monster, but a monstrous threat.” (Neale, 2000)  This means it’s a horror film if there is something that is threatening to the main characters.  Horror films often create a sense of suspense that lasts for the majority of the film.  The viewer and the characters often have a sense of confusion; they don’t know what’s going to happen next which creates a state of anxiety.  Music often plays a large role in this because you, as a viewer, know that something is about to happen because the music changes to a much faster and higher pitched tone.  The next element that characterizes a horror film is that a majority of the film will either take place at night or in a dark location.  This is because the film maker is playing off the anxiety that most people have about the dark and the mystery behind it.  You never know what is lurking in the dark because you can’t see it.  The next characteristic is that often times the villain in the film will be hard to kill, you will think that they are dead but they will enviably show up again.  The film maker often wants to create a scenario where the film viewer can relate and envision them self in a similar situation to the main character.  This makes the film even more real and scary because now it’s not just a movie its real life.  Horror movies often play on our worst fears because those are the things that really scare us.
            In wolf Creek suspense starts to build when they start telling ghost stories and then again when they get back from their hike to wolf creek and the car will not start.  Of course it’s late at night and it starts to rain, these are all indicators that something bad is about to happen and the pace of the music picks up.  Then Mick appears from nowhere and offers to fix the car if they don’t mind him taking the car back to his shop.  You are left confused with the situation, why is this guy offering to help and asking for nothing in return?  When Liz wakes up in the morning tied up in a storage room you know something is wrong.  The plot doesn’t advance any until it becomes later in the day and starts to get dark.  She gets out and it’s dead quiet, there’s no music and you are left wondering if the man is going to find her or what’s going to happen next.  She hears Kristy screaming so she goes to help, and this is probably the most disturbing part of the film because you get to see what he has done to his previous victims and what he plains on doing to them.  The rest of the film takes place during that night and into the early morning and continues to surprise and confuse the film viewer.  The director of the film made sure that he incorporated all the different elements of a horror movie into this film and ended with a scary and quite disturbing film.

Bibliography
Bond, Gavin. In Film Australia, Wolf Creek, April 30, 2006,
<http://www.infilm.com.au/reviews/wolfcreek.htm>
D, Spence, Wolf Creek Review: A devilish little respite from the holiday blockbuster,
December 2005, April 30, 2006,
<http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/678/678075p1.html>
Douglas, Edward. Cominsoon.net, Exclusive: Greg McLean Talks Wolf Creek, December
2005, April 30, 2006,
<http://www.comingsoon.net/news/topnews.php?id=12465>
Ebert, Roger. Wolf Creek, December 2005, April 30, 2006,
<http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051222/REVIEWS/51220004>
Film Four, Greg McLean on Wolf Creek, April 30, 2006,
<http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/feature.jsp?id=149626>
IMDB, Wolf Creek, April 30, 2006, <http://www.imdb.com>
Monsters and Critics.com, Wolf Creek, April 30, 2006,
<http://dvd.monstersandcritics.com/archive/dvdarchive.php/Wolf_Creek/7036>
Neale, Steve. Horror and Science Fiction: Genre and Hollywood, Routledge, London
and New York. 2000, p92-104.
Rotten Tomatoes, Wolf Creek, April 30, 2006,
<http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wolf_creek/>
Stacilayne, Wolf Creek- interview with Director Greg McLean, Part 1 of 2, December
2005, April 30, 2006, <http://www.horror.com/php/article-1055-1.html>
Wikipedia, Wolf Creek (film), April 2005, April 30, 2006,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Creek_(film)>
Wolf Creek the Movie, Wolf Creek, April 30, 2006,
<http://www.wolfcreekthemovie.com/site/>
Zeman, Zak, Wolf Creek, April 30, 2006,
<http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/review.php?id=460>