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Wolf Creek (film)
Encyclopedia
Wolf Creek is a 2005 independent Australian horror film written, co-produced and directed by Greg McLean
. The story revolves around three backpackers (played by Nathan Phillips
, Kestie Morassi
and Cassandra Magrath
) who find themselves held captive by a serial killer (John Jarratt
) in the Australian outback. The film was marketed as being "based on true events".
Wolf Creek premiered at the Sundance Film Festival
in January 2005. The Australian premiere was in March 2005 in Adelaide. The film was later screened at the Cannes Film Festival
the following May. It was released in cinemas across the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland in September 2005. In its home country of Australia, the film received a general release in November 2005, apart from the Northern Territory
, due to the trial surrounding the murder of British traveller Peter Falconio. It was released on 25 December 2005 in the United States.
The film was nominated for seven Australian Film Institute
awards, including Best Director. In 2010, it was included in Slant Magazine
's list of the 100 best films of the decade.
) and Kristy Earl (Kestie Morassi
) are backpacking
across the country with Ben Mitchell (Nathan Phillips
), an Australian friend and contrarian from Sydney
. Currently in Broome, Western Australia
, they constantly get drunk at wild, extravagant pool parties and sleep rough together on the beach. Ben buys a dilapidated Ford XD Falcon
to facilitate their road journey from Broome to Cairns, Queensland
via the Great Northern Highway
.
After stopping at Halls Creek
for the night, the trio make another stop at Wolf Creek National Park
, which contains a giant crater
formed by a 50,000-ton meteorite
. While exploring the crater, Ben and Liz kiss, after various hints from Kristy.
Hours later, upon returning to their car, the group discovers their watches have all suddenly broken and the car won't start. Unable to discover the problem, they prepare themselves to sit out the night. After dark, a Crocodile Dundee-styled man named Mick Taylor (John Jarratt
) comes upon them and offers to tow them to his camp to repair the car. After initial hesitation, the group allows Mick to take them to his place, an abandoned mining site several hours south of Wolf Creek. Mick regales them with tall stories of his past while making a show of fixing the car. His manner unsettles Liz and Kristy, although Ben is less concerned. While they sit around a fire, Mick gives the tourists drugged water which he describes as "rainwater from the top end". The water causes the tourists to eventually fall into unconsciousness.
Liz awakens late the next afternoon to find herself tied up in a shed. She manages to break free as night falls, but before she can escape the mining site, she hears Mick torturing Kristy in a garage by shooting at her, sexually abusing her and tormenting her. Liz sets the now-dismantled Falcon on fire to cause a distraction and goes to help Kristy while Mick is busy trying to extinguish the blaze. She then manages to shoot Mick with one of his own rifles, blasting him in the neck and apparently killing him. The women attempt to flee the camp in Mick's truck, but a wounded Mick stumbles out of the garage and blasts at them with a double-barreled shotgun, before giving chase in another truck. The girls evade Mick in the bush by rolling his truck off a cliff and hiding, before returning to the mining site to get another car. Liz leaves the hysterical Kristy outside the gates, telling her to escape on foot if she does not return in five minutes.
Liz enters another garage and discovers Mick's large stock of cars as well as an organised array of travellers’ possessions, including video cameras. She watches the playback on one of them and is horrified to see Mick "rescuing" other travellers stranded at Wolf Creek in almost identical circumstances to her own. She then picks up another camera which turns out to be Ben's, through viewing some of Ben's footage, the recording ends focusing on a scene with Mick's truck in the background, indicating he'd been following them long before they got to Wolf Creek. She gets into a car and attempts to start it, but Mick shows up in the back seat and stabs her through the driver's seat with a huge knife. After more bragging, he hacks three of Liz's fingers off in one swipe. He then severs her spinal cord with a knife, paralyzing her and rendering her a "head on a stick." As Liz lies motionless on the garage floor, he interrogates her for Kristy's whereabouts.
By dawn, Kristy has reached a surfaced highway and is discovered by a passing motorist. He attempts to help Kristy, but is suddenly shot dead from far away by Mick, who has a sniper rifle. Mick then gives chase in a fast Holden HQ Statesman
, prompting Kristy to take off in the dead man's car. She succeeds in ramming Mick off the road, but he coolly gets out of the car and shoot's out Kristy's back tyre, causing the car to flip over into the bush. A disoriented, dazed Kristy climbs out of the wreckage and attempts to crawl away, but is coldly shot dead by Mick. He bundles both Kristy and Liz's bodies into the back of the wrecked car and torches it before calmly driving off.
The action then cuts to Ben, whose fate until now has not been revealed. He awakens to find himself nailed to a mock crucifix
in a mine shaft, with an aggressive, caged Rottweiler
in front of him. He manages to painfully extract himself from the crucifix and enters the camp in early daylight. Ben escapes into the outback, but becomes hysterical and dehydrated, eventually passing out beside a dirt road. He is discovered by two shocked Swedish travellers who take him to Kalbarri
, where he is airlifted to hospital.
The ending reveals that no trace of Kristy and Liz were found despite several major police searches. Early investigations were disorganised and hampered by confusion, lack of physical evidence and the alleged credibility of Ben. After four months in police custody, Ben was cleared of all suspicion. The film then ends with the silhouette of Mick Taylor walking into the sunset, rifle in hand.
", and is located in northern Western Australia. It is the second largest meteorite crater in the world from which meteorite fragments have been recovered. Wolf Creek was filmed almost entirely in South Australia
; however the aerial shots of the crater in the film show the genuine Wolfe Creek crater.
Several strange occurrences happened during the production of the film; one particular location that was used during the shooting of the travellers' drive to Wolf Creek had not seen rainfall in over six years – however, once the crew arrived and shooting proceeded, it rained for three continuous days, forcing the writer, director and actors to incorporate the highly unexpected rainfall into the script. According to Greg McLean, the fact that it was raining and gloomy in an otherwise dry, sunny desert area gave the sequences a feel of "menace". Star Kestie Morassi also mentioned several odd occurrences during an audio commentary for the film, including the fact that there was a full moon on the first night of shooting the film and over a year later, when the film premiered at Sundance
there was also a full moon.
The rock quarry where Mick's mining site is located was the site of a real-life murder, which stirred up controversy from the local residents who mistook the film as being based on that crime. According to director McLean and others, John Jarratt went to extremes in preparing for his role as Mick, in a bid to emulate, as close as possible, the real-life serial killer Ivan Milat
: he spent significant time alone in the isolated outback and went for weeks without showering.
The sign on the front gate of Mick's mining site reads "Navithalim Mining Co." Navi & thalim spelt backwards reads: Ivan Milaht, evidently referencing Ivan Milat.
Since the film had a relatively low budget, many of the action scenes involved the real actors; for example, after running through the outback when her character escapes, star Kestie Morassi ended up with hundreds of thorns and nettles in her feet. During the shooting of Morassi's torture scene in the shed, her non-stop screams and crying began to discomfort and unsettle the crew; executive producer Matt Hearn said that the female members of the shooting crew were brought to tears by it, as if someone were actually being tortured.
The film was shot digitally on the HDCAM
format and was mostly handheld (aside from a few static composite
shots).
The abduction of British tourist Peter Falconio
and the assault of his girlfriend Joanne Lees
in July 2001 by Bradley John Murdoch
in the Northern Territory
are cited as influences. Murdoch's trial was still under way at the time of the film's initial release in Australia, and for this reason the Northern Territory court placed an injunction on the film's release there in the belief that it could influence the outcome of the proceedings. Many are misled into thinking that the entire movie is based on a true story, when it only had many influences from other murders around Australia, like the Ivan Milat backpacker murders and the Peter Falconio murder case.
Despite the film's commercial success, it has received a mixed reception from critics. Some critics were deeply offended by the film's brutality, while others praised it for its unorthodoxy and daring. Critic Roger Ebert
gave it a rare zero stars rating, saying, "It is a film with one clear purpose: To establish the commercial credentials of its director by showing his skill at depicting the brutal tracking, torture and mutilation of screaming young women ... I wanted to walk out of the theatre and keep on walking". Seattle Times film critic Moira Macdonald said that Wolf Creek was the first film she ever walked out on. She called watching the film "punishment" and wondered how someone's real death inspired this "entertainment". Nevertheless, it received some very positive reviews in the British press, with The Independent
praising its departure from the generic rules of the horror film
genre. Guardian
film critic Peter Bradshaw
awarded it 4/5 stars. Time Out said "by making us feel the pain, Greg McLean's ferocious, taboo-breaking film tells us so much more about how and why we watch horror movies". They admitted, however, that the film was not for everyone. The film magazines Empire
and Total Film
gave the film 4/5 stars, with Empire calling it "a grimy gut-chiller that unsettles as much as it thrills, violently shunting you to the edge of your seat before clamping onto your memory like a rusty mantrap". Fangoria
called it the scariest film of the year.
At Rotten Tomatoes
, Wolf Creek has a 52% "rotten" rating based on 108 reviews.
The other additional footage took place when Liz returns to the mining site after leaving Kristy behind; rather than immediately entering the car garage, as she does in the theatrical cut, she finds a revolver and fills it with cartridges, and then explores an abandoned mine shaft in order to search for Ben. She subsequently drops her pistol into the shaft, and climbs down inside to find dozens of decomposing bodies. This explains why, in the theatrical cut, the revolver disappears after she enters the car garage. According to director Greg McLean, this scene was cut from the film after test screening
s because it was "simply too much", along with all of the other gruesome events that had taken place prior. The scene in which Liz's spine is severed by Mick was also slightly longer, including more close-ups and shots.
When the film premiered in the United States on DVD, both an R-rated cut (which is identical to the theatrical release), and an Unrated cut (which incorporates the aforementioned scenes) were released.
Greg McLean
Greg McLean is an Australian film director, producer and writer.- Biography :According to the production notes for film Wolf Creek, "after training as a fine artist specializing in painting, McLean attended the National Institute of Dramatic Art , completing a graduate diploma in directing." In his...
. The story revolves around three backpackers (played by Nathan Phillips
Nathan Phillips (actor)
Nathan Scott Phillips is an Australian actor who is currently based in Los Angeles. He is perhaps best known for his role as backpacker Ben Mitchell in Wolf Creek and for his American film debut, Snakes on a Plane, opposite Samuel L...
, Kestie Morassi
Kestie Morassi
Kestie Morassi is an Australian actress born in Adelaide, South Australia, where she lived until she was 13 years old. She studied at the National Theatre, Melbourne Drama School, graduating in 1994, and another five years at Drama with a Difference....
and Cassandra Magrath
Cassandra Magrath
Cassandra Magrath is an Australian actress, best known for her portrayal of Miranda Gibson in the Australian ABC 1998–2000 television series SeaChange and in the lead role in the 2005 Australian horror film Wolf Creek.-Early life:Magrath attended a drama class for a ten year period...
) who find themselves held captive by a serial killer (John Jarratt
John Jarratt
-Early life:Jarratt was born and grew up in Wongawilli, a small rural town near Wollongong, New South Wales and later in the Snowy Mountains area. Jarratt's father was a coal miner and later concreter, who worked on the Snowy Mountains hydroelectric scheme. Both his parents were of Irish origin....
) in the Australian outback. The film was marketed as being "based on true events".
Wolf Creek premiered at the Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
in January 2005. The Australian premiere was in March 2005 in Adelaide. The film was later screened at the Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
the following May. It was released in cinemas across the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland in September 2005. In its home country of Australia, the film received a general release in November 2005, apart from the Northern Territory
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory is a federal territory of Australia, occupying much of the centre of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions...
, due to the trial surrounding the murder of British traveller Peter Falconio. It was released on 25 December 2005 in the United States.
The film was nominated for seven Australian Film Institute
Australian Film Institute
The Australian Film Institute was founded in 1958 as a non-profit organisation devoted to developing an active film culture in Australia and fostering engagement between the general public and the Australian film industry...
awards, including Best Director. In 2010, it was included in Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine is an online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York Film Festival.- History :...
's list of the 100 best films of the decade.
Plot
Set in Australia in 1999, two British tourists, Liz Hunter (Cassandra MagrathCassandra Magrath
Cassandra Magrath is an Australian actress, best known for her portrayal of Miranda Gibson in the Australian ABC 1998–2000 television series SeaChange and in the lead role in the 2005 Australian horror film Wolf Creek.-Early life:Magrath attended a drama class for a ten year period...
) and Kristy Earl (Kestie Morassi
Kestie Morassi
Kestie Morassi is an Australian actress born in Adelaide, South Australia, where she lived until she was 13 years old. She studied at the National Theatre, Melbourne Drama School, graduating in 1994, and another five years at Drama with a Difference....
) are backpacking
Backpacking (travel)
Backpacking is a term that has historically been used to denote a form of low-cost, independent international travel. Terms such as independent travel and/or budget travel are often used...
across the country with Ben Mitchell (Nathan Phillips
Nathan Phillips (actor)
Nathan Scott Phillips is an Australian actor who is currently based in Los Angeles. He is perhaps best known for his role as backpacker Ben Mitchell in Wolf Creek and for his American film debut, Snakes on a Plane, opposite Samuel L...
), an Australian friend and contrarian from Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
. Currently in Broome, Western Australia
Broome, Western Australia
Broome is a pearling and tourist town in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, north of Perth. The year round population is approximately 14,436, growing to more than 45,000 per month during the tourist season...
, they constantly get drunk at wild, extravagant pool parties and sleep rough together on the beach. Ben buys a dilapidated Ford XD Falcon
Ford XD Falcon
The Ford XD Falcon is a car that was produced by the Ford Motor Company of Australia between 1979 and 1982.The XD series was introduced on 28 March 1979 and was initially offered in five models:* Falcon GL * Fairmont...
to facilitate their road journey from Broome to Cairns, Queensland
Cairns, Queensland
Cairns is a regional city in Far North Queensland, Australia, founded 1876. The city was named after William Wellington Cairns, then-current Governor of Queensland. It was formed to serve miners heading for the Hodgkinson River goldfield, but experienced a decline when an easier route was...
via the Great Northern Highway
Great Northern Highway
The Great Northern Highway is a generally north-south Western Australian highway which links the state's capital Perth with its most northern port, Wyndham. It is in length, with being National Highway...
.
After stopping at Halls Creek
Halls Creek, Western Australia
Halls Creek is a small town situated in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia. It is located between the towns of Fitzroy Crossing and Turkey Creek on the Great Northern Highway...
for the night, the trio make another stop at Wolf Creek National Park
Wolfe Creek Crater
Wolfe Creek Crater is a well-preserved meteorite impact crater in Western Australia., It is accessed via the Tanami Road south of the town of Halls Creek...
, which contains a giant crater
Crater
Crater may refer to:In landforms:*Impact crater, caused by two celestial bodies impacting each other, such as a meteorite hitting a planet*Volcanic crater or caldera, formed by volcanic activity...
formed by a 50,000-ton meteorite
Meteorite
A meteorite is a natural object originating in outer space that survives impact with the Earth's surface. Meteorites can be big or small. Most meteorites derive from small astronomical objects called meteoroids, but they are also sometimes produced by impacts of asteroids...
. While exploring the crater, Ben and Liz kiss, after various hints from Kristy.
Hours later, upon returning to their car, the group discovers their watches have all suddenly broken and the car won't start. Unable to discover the problem, they prepare themselves to sit out the night. After dark, a Crocodile Dundee-styled man named Mick Taylor (John Jarratt
John Jarratt
-Early life:Jarratt was born and grew up in Wongawilli, a small rural town near Wollongong, New South Wales and later in the Snowy Mountains area. Jarratt's father was a coal miner and later concreter, who worked on the Snowy Mountains hydroelectric scheme. Both his parents were of Irish origin....
) comes upon them and offers to tow them to his camp to repair the car. After initial hesitation, the group allows Mick to take them to his place, an abandoned mining site several hours south of Wolf Creek. Mick regales them with tall stories of his past while making a show of fixing the car. His manner unsettles Liz and Kristy, although Ben is less concerned. While they sit around a fire, Mick gives the tourists drugged water which he describes as "rainwater from the top end". The water causes the tourists to eventually fall into unconsciousness.
Liz awakens late the next afternoon to find herself tied up in a shed. She manages to break free as night falls, but before she can escape the mining site, she hears Mick torturing Kristy in a garage by shooting at her, sexually abusing her and tormenting her. Liz sets the now-dismantled Falcon on fire to cause a distraction and goes to help Kristy while Mick is busy trying to extinguish the blaze. She then manages to shoot Mick with one of his own rifles, blasting him in the neck and apparently killing him. The women attempt to flee the camp in Mick's truck, but a wounded Mick stumbles out of the garage and blasts at them with a double-barreled shotgun, before giving chase in another truck. The girls evade Mick in the bush by rolling his truck off a cliff and hiding, before returning to the mining site to get another car. Liz leaves the hysterical Kristy outside the gates, telling her to escape on foot if she does not return in five minutes.
Liz enters another garage and discovers Mick's large stock of cars as well as an organised array of travellers’ possessions, including video cameras. She watches the playback on one of them and is horrified to see Mick "rescuing" other travellers stranded at Wolf Creek in almost identical circumstances to her own. She then picks up another camera which turns out to be Ben's, through viewing some of Ben's footage, the recording ends focusing on a scene with Mick's truck in the background, indicating he'd been following them long before they got to Wolf Creek. She gets into a car and attempts to start it, but Mick shows up in the back seat and stabs her through the driver's seat with a huge knife. After more bragging, he hacks three of Liz's fingers off in one swipe. He then severs her spinal cord with a knife, paralyzing her and rendering her a "head on a stick." As Liz lies motionless on the garage floor, he interrogates her for Kristy's whereabouts.
By dawn, Kristy has reached a surfaced highway and is discovered by a passing motorist. He attempts to help Kristy, but is suddenly shot dead from far away by Mick, who has a sniper rifle. Mick then gives chase in a fast Holden HQ Statesman
Statesman (automobile)
Statesman was an automotive marque created in 1971 by General Motors Holden , the Australian subsidiary of General Motors. Statesman vehicles were sold through Holden dealerships, and were initially based on the mainstream Holden HQ station wagon platform, thereby providing more interior room and...
, prompting Kristy to take off in the dead man's car. She succeeds in ramming Mick off the road, but he coolly gets out of the car and shoot's out Kristy's back tyre, causing the car to flip over into the bush. A disoriented, dazed Kristy climbs out of the wreckage and attempts to crawl away, but is coldly shot dead by Mick. He bundles both Kristy and Liz's bodies into the back of the wrecked car and torches it before calmly driving off.
The action then cuts to Ben, whose fate until now has not been revealed. He awakens to find himself nailed to a mock crucifix
Crucifix
A crucifix is an independent image of Jesus on the cross with a representation of Jesus' body, referred to in English as the corpus , as distinct from a cross with no body....
in a mine shaft, with an aggressive, caged Rottweiler
Rottweiler
The Rottweiler is a medium to large size breed of domestic dog that originated in Rottweil, Germany. The dogs were known as "Rottweil butchers' dogs" because they were used to herd livestock and pull carts laden with butchered meat and other products to market...
in front of him. He manages to painfully extract himself from the crucifix and enters the camp in early daylight. Ben escapes into the outback, but becomes hysterical and dehydrated, eventually passing out beside a dirt road. He is discovered by two shocked Swedish travellers who take him to Kalbarri
Kalbarri, Western Australia
Kalbarri is a coastal town in the Mid West region located 592 km north of Perth, Western Australia. The town is found at the mouth of the Murchison River and has an elevation of...
, where he is airlifted to hospital.
The ending reveals that no trace of Kristy and Liz were found despite several major police searches. Early investigations were disorganised and hampered by confusion, lack of physical evidence and the alleged credibility of Ben. After four months in police custody, Ben was cleared of all suspicion. The film then ends with the silhouette of Mick Taylor walking into the sunset, rifle in hand.
Cast
- John JarrattJohn Jarratt-Early life:Jarratt was born and grew up in Wongawilli, a small rural town near Wollongong, New South Wales and later in the Snowy Mountains area. Jarratt's father was a coal miner and later concreter, who worked on the Snowy Mountains hydroelectric scheme. Both his parents were of Irish origin....
as Mick Taylor - Nathan PhillipsNathan Phillips (actor)Nathan Scott Phillips is an Australian actor who is currently based in Los Angeles. He is perhaps best known for his role as backpacker Ben Mitchell in Wolf Creek and for his American film debut, Snakes on a Plane, opposite Samuel L...
as Ben Mitchell - Kestie MorassiKestie MorassiKestie Morassi is an Australian actress born in Adelaide, South Australia, where she lived until she was 13 years old. She studied at the National Theatre, Melbourne Drama School, graduating in 1994, and another five years at Drama with a Difference....
as Kristy Earl - Cassandra MagrathCassandra MagrathCassandra Magrath is an Australian actress, best known for her portrayal of Miranda Gibson in the Australian ABC 1998–2000 television series SeaChange and in the lead role in the 2005 Australian horror film Wolf Creek.-Early life:Magrath attended a drama class for a ten year period...
as Liz Hunter - Guy O'Donnell as Car Salesman
- Geoff Revell as Graham (petrol station attendant)
- Andy McPhee as Bazza (pervert in petrol station)
- Aaron Sterns as Bazza's mate
- Michael Moody as Bazza's older mate
- Gordon Poole as Old Man
- Guy Petersen as Swedish backpacker who helps Ben
- Jenny Starvall as Swedish backpacker who helps Ben
- Greg McLeanGreg McLeanGreg McLean is an Australian film director, producer and writer.- Biography :According to the production notes for film Wolf Creek, "after training as a fine artist specializing in painting, McLean attended the National Institute of Dramatic Art , completing a graduate diploma in directing." In his...
as Policeman (cameo)
Production
Wolf Creek is set in a real location; however, the actual meteorite crater location is called "Wolfe CreekWolfe Creek crater
Wolfe Creek Crater is a well-preserved meteorite impact crater in Western Australia., It is accessed via the Tanami Road south of the town of Halls Creek...
", and is located in northern Western Australia. It is the second largest meteorite crater in the world from which meteorite fragments have been recovered. Wolf Creek was filmed almost entirely in South Australia
South Australia
South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...
; however the aerial shots of the crater in the film show the genuine Wolfe Creek crater.
Several strange occurrences happened during the production of the film; one particular location that was used during the shooting of the travellers' drive to Wolf Creek had not seen rainfall in over six years – however, once the crew arrived and shooting proceeded, it rained for three continuous days, forcing the writer, director and actors to incorporate the highly unexpected rainfall into the script. According to Greg McLean, the fact that it was raining and gloomy in an otherwise dry, sunny desert area gave the sequences a feel of "menace". Star Kestie Morassi also mentioned several odd occurrences during an audio commentary for the film, including the fact that there was a full moon on the first night of shooting the film and over a year later, when the film premiered at Sundance
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
there was also a full moon.
The rock quarry where Mick's mining site is located was the site of a real-life murder, which stirred up controversy from the local residents who mistook the film as being based on that crime. According to director McLean and others, John Jarratt went to extremes in preparing for his role as Mick, in a bid to emulate, as close as possible, the real-life serial killer Ivan Milat
Backpacker murders
The Backpacker Murders is a name given to serial killings that occurred in New South Wales, Australia during the 1990s. The bodies of seven missing young people aged 19 to 22 were discovered partly buried in the Belanglo State Forest, south west of the New South Wales town of Berrima...
: he spent significant time alone in the isolated outback and went for weeks without showering.
The sign on the front gate of Mick's mining site reads "Navithalim Mining Co." Navi & thalim spelt backwards reads: Ivan Milaht, evidently referencing Ivan Milat.
Since the film had a relatively low budget, many of the action scenes involved the real actors; for example, after running through the outback when her character escapes, star Kestie Morassi ended up with hundreds of thorns and nettles in her feet. During the shooting of Morassi's torture scene in the shed, her non-stop screams and crying began to discomfort and unsettle the crew; executive producer Matt Hearn said that the female members of the shooting crew were brought to tears by it, as if someone were actually being tortured.
The film was shot digitally on the HDCAM
HDCAM
HDCAM, introduced in 1997, is an High-definition video digital recording videocassette version of Digital Betacam, using an 8-bit DCT compressed 3:1:1 recording, in 1080i-compatible downsampled resolution of 1440×1080, and adding 24p and 23.976 PsF modes to later models...
format and was mostly handheld (aside from a few static composite
Compositing
Compositing is the combining of visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live-action shooting for compositing is variously called "chroma key", "blue screen", "green screen" and other names. Today,...
shots).
Basis in reality
Wolf Creek was marketed as being "based on true events."The abduction of British tourist Peter Falconio
Peter Falconio
Peter Marco Falconio was a British tourist who disappeared in the Australian outback in July 2001, while travelling with girlfriend Joanne Lees and is nowpresumed dead....
and the assault of his girlfriend Joanne Lees
Joanne Lees
Joanne Rachael Lees is a British woman who is most notable for being the girlfriend of Peter Falconio at the time of his murder on a remote stretch of highway near Barrow Creek in outback Northern Territory, Australia on 14 July 2001...
in July 2001 by Bradley John Murdoch
Bradley John Murdoch
Bradley John Murdoch is serving life imprisonment for the July 2001 murder of English backpacker Peter Falconio in Australia. He will be 74 when eligible for parole. Murdoch is being held in Alice Springs Correctional Centre in Alice Springs. He has lodged two appeals against his conviction; both...
in the Northern Territory
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory is a federal territory of Australia, occupying much of the centre of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions...
are cited as influences. Murdoch's trial was still under way at the time of the film's initial release in Australia, and for this reason the Northern Territory court placed an injunction on the film's release there in the belief that it could influence the outcome of the proceedings. Many are misled into thinking that the entire movie is based on a true story, when it only had many influences from other murders around Australia, like the Ivan Milat backpacker murders and the Peter Falconio murder case.
Reception
Wolf Creek opened on 151 cinemas in Australia on 3 November 2005 (the film had previously been shown at a number of film festivals) and took A$1.225 million in its first weekend, making it the number one film for the weekend. In the United Kingdom, the film was given a modest release on 16 September 2005, and grossed £1,500,000. The film opened on Christmas Day 2005 in the United States and grossed $16,188,180 on American screens, while also garnering an extra $11,574,468 overseas, bringing the total gross to US$27,762,648.Despite the film's commercial success, it has received a mixed reception from critics. Some critics were deeply offended by the film's brutality, while others praised it for its unorthodoxy and daring. Critic Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
gave it a rare zero stars rating, saying, "It is a film with one clear purpose: To establish the commercial credentials of its director by showing his skill at depicting the brutal tracking, torture and mutilation of screaming young women ... I wanted to walk out of the theatre and keep on walking". Seattle Times film critic Moira Macdonald said that Wolf Creek was the first film she ever walked out on. She called watching the film "punishment" and wondered how someone's real death inspired this "entertainment". Nevertheless, it received some very positive reviews in the British press, with The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
praising its departure from the generic rules of the horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
genre. Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
film critic Peter Bradshaw
Peter Bradshaw
Peter Bradshaw is a British writer and film critic. He was educated at Cambridge University, where he was President of Footlights.Bradshaw is a film critic for The Guardian...
awarded it 4/5 stars. Time Out said "by making us feel the pain, Greg McLean's ferocious, taboo-breaking film tells us so much more about how and why we watch horror movies". They admitted, however, that the film was not for everyone. The film magazines Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
and Total Film
Total Film
Total Film is a British film magazine published 13 times a year by Future Publishing. The magazine was launched in 1997 and offers film, DVD and Blu-ray news, reviews and features...
gave the film 4/5 stars, with Empire calling it "a grimy gut-chiller that unsettles as much as it thrills, violently shunting you to the edge of your seat before clamping onto your memory like a rusty mantrap". Fangoria
Fangoria (magazine)
Fangoria is an internationally-distributed US film fan magazine specializing in the genres of horror, slasher, splatter and exploitation films, in regular publication since 1979.-Planning:...
called it the scariest film of the year.
At Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, Wolf Creek has a 52% "rotten" rating based on 108 reviews.
Alternative versions
The original cut of Wolf Creek ran 104 minutes, approximately 5 minutes longer than the 99 minute cut that was released in cinemas. The extra footage in this cut included an additional scene at the beginning of the film after the party scene, in which Kristy awakens in bed next to Ben at a beach cottage the following morning; this created a romantic subplot between the characters, and was cut from the film for "complicating" matters unnecessarily.The other additional footage took place when Liz returns to the mining site after leaving Kristy behind; rather than immediately entering the car garage, as she does in the theatrical cut, she finds a revolver and fills it with cartridges, and then explores an abandoned mine shaft in order to search for Ben. She subsequently drops her pistol into the shaft, and climbs down inside to find dozens of decomposing bodies. This explains why, in the theatrical cut, the revolver disappears after she enters the car garage. According to director Greg McLean, this scene was cut from the film after test screening
Test screening
A test screening is a preview screening of a movie or television show before its general release in order to gauge audience reaction. Preview audiences are selected from a cross-section of the population, and are usually asked to complete a questionnaire or provide feedback in some form. Harold...
s because it was "simply too much", along with all of the other gruesome events that had taken place prior. The scene in which Liz's spine is severed by Mick was also slightly longer, including more close-ups and shots.
When the film premiered in the United States on DVD, both an R-rated cut (which is identical to the theatrical release), and an Unrated cut (which incorporates the aforementioned scenes) were released.
Sequel
On 30 September 2010, writer/director Greg McLean confirmed a sequel is in the works. Production is expected to commence sometime in 2011. The film will be set in the Outback, Australia and will once again feature the character of Mick Taylor. Like the previous film, the story will have some elements based on true events. John Jarratt is also set to reprise the role of Mick Taylor.External links
- Urban Cinefile article, November 2005
- John Jarrett Interview