I know that POP TV is going to do a Wolf Creek mini-series, so I wanted to see what the hype was. Easy enough reason, right?
Start Film
Oh, this is based on actual events, and 30,000 people get lost in Australia every year, and 90% of them are found. Could you be more detailed please? Gotta love subtitles when you need them. Our 3 main characters are Ben, Liz (Short Hair) and Kristy (Longer Hair). They are going on a trip to Wolf Creek it sounds like, but the night before, they partied a little too hard. Really digging “Eagle Rock” by Daddy Cool. Haha, the songs in the car are cracking me up. I feel bad for being stuck with 2 women for this long of a period of time. They end up going to Emu Creek because half of the places there are ___ Creek, and they stop to get some gas. He is left to do all the work, while the girls smoke and go to the bathroom. I am shocked. These local Aussie guys talk shit to Ben, but he doesn’t step up as the one dude, Daza, was a tall drink of water. They make it to Wolf Creek and it’s like a 3-hour hike to this crater. OK. He’s the pack mule, and Kristy is carrying 2 umbrellas. The struggle real. This crater is pretty fucking neat. Apparently everybody in this group smokes. Terribly turned off at the moment. Liz goes wandering off alone while the other 2 chill under an umbrella. I should note that Ben and Liz may have something going on, like a budding romance that I give zero fucks about, unless she gets nude. Oh, he found her and they start kissing. And then they start giggling.
They regroup back at the car, and all of their watches have stopped at 6:30. And of course the car won’t start. The battery appears to be dead. Kristy is all pissed off because they have to spend the night. Seriously, don’t be a bitch in times when things are fucked. Ben is wondering if the watches and car not working are correlated to some UFO story that he had told the girls. There is some light and it is not a car, and everybody scared….but it is a car. Hahaha. This old dude, Mick I think his name, and he is hilarious. He offers to tow them back and try to fix the car tonight, but they are afraid of him wanting money and they are fairly broke. This guy isn’t going to charge them. This guy is hilarious. They want to go back to town, but that’s north, and he’s going south, so they take him up on his generous offer.
This is a pretty long ass drive/ride, and the girls are all worried. While I know that Mick has to be a bad guy, he’s a solid bad guy. Mick used to be a shooter of pests and vermin. He is telling all of these stories about dangerous animals. Ben is trying to be funny, and Ben ain’t laughing. He says that he takes out roos, doing the public a service, like taking out tourists. Liz is pissed at them for cracking jokes at this guy’s expense. Mick goes to work and the other 3 take a nap around the campfire. Before Liz fell asleep, she asked Ben to move the cooler away from the fire, and he did not.
Liz wakes up with her legs and wrists restrained and a bandanna around her mouth, and she is inside a shed of sorts. She looks out the window and sees nobody. She finds some broken glass and cuts the restraints and is now looking for the best way to get out. It’s still night time, and she goes out the window. She is about to take off and then hears a scream, from Kristy it sounds like. She looks through a window, and there’s Ben, and Kristy is died up begging him not to kill her. He points a gun at her and just says bang. He’s still funny. He tells her that nothing happens when the bolt of open, so he then shoot towards her and scares her. He looks like he may try to get his rape on, so that’s cool. She pleads that she won’t tell anybody if he lets her go. Liz looks for ways to cause a distraction, so she sets the car on fire. He blames himself for not putting the fire out but then notices that the one window is open. Liz goes to Kristy, asking her where Ben is. Time to go fuck with Kristy some more while Liz hides. He gets his knife out and wants her to play and cuts her free. He wants to cut Kristy’s tits off. Liz pulls the gun on Ben, and then fires at him and gets him on the side of the neck. Liz doesn’t know how to reload, so she just tries to beat him with the gun and hits like a pussy. Seriously, your life is on the line along with your friends. Kristy won’t stop crying obnoxiously.
SO they get to the truck, no keys. Oh, she left the gun right next to him, but he’s still down. How dumb. Liz gets the keys and the truck is started, and Mick is up with a shotgun and blew the windshield out. Then instead of going in reverse, she drives towards him. Oh boy. Now she is driving like a maniac, at night and no idea where she is going. They almost drive off a ledge. So you get back in and find a different path. They instead push the truck over the ledge and decide to climb down, at night. This movie has just lost me. There he is finally, and he is looking with his flashlight and they are hidden. Liz has to put her finger up to her mouth to silence Kristy. Like, really? They decide that he has moved on, so they try to steal his ride, never check to see if her keys would work, but rather go back to his place and try to get yet another vehicle. Kristy is worried that he is going to torture them for months like he did the previous victims. She wants Kristy to wait there for 5 minutes, and if she don’t return, Kristy just walks one direction and find a road. So why not do that now?
Liz finds lots of vehicles but is really looking for Ben. She finds Ben’s knife, perhaps. She finds a video camera showing him doing the exact same thing with a father and daughter. There’s Ben’s camera. In Ben’s video, she sees Mick’s truck. OMG! OK, I’m being facetious. I don’t use stupid abbreviations like OMG. She starts up a vehicle, and he stabs her. She tries to fend him off with the pocket knife, so she lost some fingers. He headbutts her for wrecking his truck. Good for him. Now he’s severing her spine, and it’s called “Head on a stick”. OK, that was fun at least.
Kristy starts to go in the straight path. She made it to the road, and she’s running, but she is very weak from everything. A vehicle is approaching, and that’s always an excellent sign. Please be Ben. Damn. I wanted him to turn on her. It’s an old dude, he gets her a blanket and sets a thermos on it. When he looks at it again, there is a hole in it. Then he gets sniped from a ridiculous range, right through the eye. Kristy tries to drive but doesn’t have keys. She gets them, tries starting up the vehicle, but there’s Mick already hot on her track. Go get her Mick!! He’s got a faster vehicle than she does, and it’s not even close. She bumps his car off the road and is all celebratory. So he takes his gun out and takes aim, and there goes her tire and the car flipped. Nice. He pulls up near her, and she looks disoriented. She can’t get out, oh there she goes, and she’s crawling, and he shoots her very close range. He put another one in her just in case. Smart. Well, he burns her and the old man up in the car.
Hey, there’s Ben, and he is attached to a wall via nails and wire. He forces his hands through the nails and wriggles out, as the guy next to him failed to do. So he’s out of this cave, and Mick is on his way back. Ben starts walking through the bush, without any supplies. You can’t survive out there with no supplies. The sun is setting, and well everything is bad for Ben. Hey, it’s dawn, and there are some kangaroos. A couple find him by the road and get him in their van. They get him to a hospital and he’s getting airlifted via plane. Ben was in police custody for 4 months, and the police fucked up the investigation, and cited that the only witness was unreliable.
End Film
Final Thoughts – Damnit, I knew it was too good to be true. Here’s the thing, Eden Lake, Hostel, and High Tension all were part of the 6 things that IMDB recommended with this, along with the sequel, the mini-series, and Vacancy. I fucking knew it. Those 3 movies are overblown and for fans that like to only accept what the film gives you without taking a moment to realize just how dumb everybody is. I was legitimately fine with everything up to Liz shooting Mick. Everything was at least believable, and I am good with a few mistakes. What I cannot, and will not accept is why they don’t kill him with his gun, or find a knife, do something to further incapacitate or most likely, just kill him. The movie went from something I was buying into supernatural…….zero fucks given mode. Yeah, I get it, the movie would have ended. So you elongate the earlier stuff. Then, Liz happened to pick the ONE fucking car that he was hiding in, so he stabs her and then severs her spine? Seriously? THIS is the shit that drives me nuts as a horror fan. Yeah, I’m going to watch the sequel, but not the mini-series. I’m only watching the sequel because Mick returns, and he’s at least funny. But for serious horror, no. If you like Eden Lake, High Tension, and Hostel, go knock yourself right the fuck out because it really reminded me of the way I felt after Eden Lake especially. It was filmed nicely, the actors were very good, everything else was good, but those 2 mistakes killed the film. It wasn’t a masterpiece, to begin with, but had she just missed the gunshot and he went to town on them, or if they just changed it slightly to make it believable, this would have been a 6.5 movie, maybe higher. It reminded me of a shitty Frontier(s). I just want to make this clear. I’m a horror fan through and through, and logic doesn’t necessarily have to exist, but there are rules. Once rules are established, it feels cheap to disrupt the rules “just because”. So if we are to take this on based on a true story type situation, then no supernatural powers, just a dude who likes to torture and hunt, right? OK, so how did he get into the right car again? If you are in a life or death struggle, and you have the upper hand, you kill to save your life or seriously maim. If this was Friday the 13th, shit can slide because of what we have established as a fantasy setting, not based on true events. This is why veteran horror fans get pissed off.
Final Rating – 4.9 because aside from 2 scenes, this movie was very good. If you don’t dwell on stuff as I do, you may really enjoy this. It is well done. It’s worth a watch just for the sake of judging it for yourself.
All the pictures used in this blog are for review purposes. They are the property of:
- Australian Film Finance Corporation, The (presents) (as FFC Australia/Film Finance Corporation)
- South Australian Film Corporation, The (in association with)
- 403 Productions (in association with)
- True Crime Channel (in association with)
- Best FX (Boom Sound) (uncredited)
- Emu Creek Pictures (uncredited)
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