WOLF CREEK

Australia, 2005, 99 minutes, Colour.
Nathan Phillips, John Jarratt, Cassandra Magrath, Kestie Morassi.
Directed by Greg Maclean.

The shadow of Crocodile Dundee

First time feature director, Greg Maclean, must have felt that he had fallen on his feet at the 2005 Festival of Cannes. He was an official selection film-maker in the Director’s Fortnight. He was feted. His film was well reviewed – and he had paid off his budget (and then some) through overseas distribution sales, especially in the United States. Wolf Creek was a hit.

It would be interesting, on the other hand, to hear the views of the Northern Territory and South Australian Tourist Bureaus. Wolf Creek is about tourism, but tourism that ends badly. It is a cautionary horror tale for visitors.

Maclean has said that his project was already in progress when Ivan Milat came to trial for the backpacker murders in the southern highlands of New South Wales – and he remarked in the Media kit that what was revealed in the trial was far more horrible than anything which happened on screen. Then came the disappearance of Peter Falconio and some scepticism, especially by the media, regarding the story put forward by his girlfriend about what happened. Echoes of that case are prominent in Wolf Creek. In the film, it is the girls who die and the man who survives and has to justify himself.

A French wit at the Cannes Festival suggested that Wolf Creek should be the winner, not of the Camera D’ Or for first-time director, but the Camera Gore. Funny but misleading – as were so many of the critical and puff pieces that linked it to splatter films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. These slasher films are genre pieces where the horror seems so impossible and excessive that one suspends disbelief and simply disbelieves and admires (or not) how writer and director exploit the conventions. Wolf Creek is more serious than that.

Because Wolf Creek gathers elements of real events in Australia, we know that, despite the bizarre killer, this kind of thing can happen. There are certainly some moments of horror (very grimly so), but they are in a more ‘realistic’ context, more credible.

It all starts off as a road movie, tourists on the beach at Broome and a whole lot of partying going on. Three of them (two British girls and a man from Sydney) decide to visit the meteorite crater at Wolf Creek. When they break down, a friendly truckie takes them to his home – and the terror begins.

We see three ordinary people on holidays, travelling and then trying to cope with vicious violence. While the screenplay is not so interested in developing their characters, they seem to belong to the majority of ordinary types and groups. The popular audience, especially the multiplex audience will identify easily with characters and behaviour.

What the screenplay is definitely interested in is dramatising the type of the killer.

At the end of the film, where the young man is finally cleared of suspicion in the deaths of his travelling companions, the final image is that of the killer. Crocodile Dundee style, he lopes casually, a touch larger than life, free into the sunset. In fact, there are several references to Crocodile Dundee during the film, including an alarmingly sinister reference to his ‘now, that’s a knife’. What Wolf Creek seems to be doing is showing us the shadow side of the image, if not the reality, of the average outback Australian male/loner/hunter/hero. What we see here is this potentially heroic Aussie battler stuck in his type with disastrous results.

The killer is genial, all smiles and generosity, looking and sounding like the Dundee image. Even though he is a cruel predator (of human victims, their videos and cameras and their cars), he is not like the Leatherfaces and other monstrous hillbillies of the American slasher movies. Veteran John Jarrat plays the killer in a commonsense, Ocker, humorous and deadpan way, making his violence and cruelty all the more alarming, the manic side of the lone hunter.

When he comes across the stranded tourists, they quickly lose their wariness and warm to the friendly extraverted behaviour. He has a practical plan for how to fix their car, details of what is wrong as well as information and reassurances that all will be well.

We don’t know really know what makes the killer tick. Rather, his pleasant side has been trapped by the shadow. Any development of his sensing is channelled into devising ways of tantalising, taunting and torturing his victims. Any development of his feeling has driven him into an insane subjectivity, king of the outback, king of the world in his lost world kingdom. He is one of the worst examples of the immaturity-wreaking havoc of the ‘puer eternus’.

In ocker terms, the good bloke who enjoys some larrikin attitudes and behaviour has become a deadly hooligan.

Greg Maclean may be surprised at a psychological look at his film. He would say that it is an entertainment with a grounding in fact. But his choice of the Crocodile Dundee imagery enables us to ask deeper questions – and wonder about the shadow side of the Ocker man.

1. The success of the film in Australia, overseas? Sales? The appeal? The audience? The genre?

2. The film based on true stories, the dramatisation of madness and violence, sexuality and oppression? The Australian locations and style – in comparison with similar treatments of American themes?

3. The use of horror/terror devices? The menace, the assault? The explicit violence?

4. The Broome locations, the beach, the party, the introduction to the characters? The British and the Australians in the Australian desert?

5. The desert, space, the car and the preparation for the trip, the pubs on the way, life in the pubs, the drinkers, the jokes? The vulgarity? Getting the petrol? The challenge, the laughter? The sense of menace at the same time?

6. Wolf Creek itself, the location, the crater, isolated? The visit, the sense of wonder at the size of the crater? The discussion about fate and that the meteor should have hit the earth at that spot? The kiss?

7. The watches stopping, the car breaking down? Mick arriving, the Crocodile Dundee style, laugh, practical, making decisions? The group wary, being towed, dozing, anxious, the arrival, everything seeming to be okay?

8. Liz, her character, the stronger of the two women, the relationship with Ben, Chris, the attraction, the kiss?

9. Each of the characters and the experience of waking in fright? The film and its explanation of each character, giving the story of each, as tormented by Mick?

10. Liz, breaking free, the explosion, helping Chris, driving, hiding over the cliff, the crash, the discovery of the bodies, the videos and looking at them, the cars in the garage, the fear of Mick, her fingers being lopped off, the comment about head on a stick – and her sudden death?

11. Chris, being taunted and tortured, her fear, dependence on Liz, hiding, the car, the crash? The old man and the possibility of escape – and his being shot?

12. Ben, the Australian, jovial, being nailed, pulling himself free, walking, being picked up, the irony of the suspicions, the trial, his being set free?

13. Mick and the portrait of the mad Australian, the Top End, his hide-out preying on people, the sadistic games, his seeming practical commonsense, his intensity and madness, the water, tying people up, torture, sadism – yet shrewd? The shooting? The escapes, the pursuit, the old man, the car over the cliff? How plausible a character in this kind of isolation?

14. The outback and terror, dangers – and the effect on tourists? The mock Crocodile Dundee ending as the mad man from the Territory walks into the sunset?