I remember seeing advertisements for this movie as a young boy, and wondered what the fuck all the hype was about. I use the term “young boy” pretty loosely, because it was only seven years ago. That doesn’t change the fact that this movie that was made in Australia was somehow popping up on my radar of movies, even without spending nearly as much time as I do now seeking horror movies. All I really remember hearing was, “Hey guys, there’s this movie from Australia that’s supposed to be awesome!” and it even got a theatrical release somewhere near me. I didn’t see it until it was released on DVD, but when I watched it, I didn’t realize what all the fuss was about. It was good, sure, but was it great? Not really. I couldn’t really remember much about it so I gave it another shot. Will my opinion change? Will I like it more? Will I like it less? Well just keeping reading to find out, ya dummy!

For now it’s all fun in the sun, but wait until you are getting TORTURED AND KILLED AND DEAD BECAUSE YOU PROBABLY WON’T BE LAUGHING THEN BECAUSE YOU’LL BE DEAD.

A group of friends are on a vacation traveling through the Australian outback. They’re camping out, going to parties, going to the beach, doing all the things that good buds do. They’re in search of Wolf Creek, a cool place to camp out, when they get into some car trouble. A man is passing by and offers them assistance, but before he does, they all just hang out together and drink some beers. When the man finally does help, he turns out to be a crazy weirdo who kidnaps and tortures them! Oh no! Who woulda thunk it?! OF COURSE THAT WAS GOING TO FUCKING HAPPEN. The two ladies of the trio are tortured for a little bit, seemingly for no other reason than the guy is a creep, and they also get killed. Wherever the guy from the trio was being held, he was able to escape and find a car driving by who actually saved him. I mean, that’s it, really. People hang out, get kidnapped, one escapes and the wildman torturer is never found. And it’s also “based on true events”, despite not really being based on true events.

Avoiding the more traditional Crocodile Dundee quote about knives and will instead reference the game of knifey-spoony. Wait, I just did reference that. Add in your own quote in regards to knifey-spoony. Thank you.

I suppose I might have confused you with that last part, the “based on true events” thing, so I apologize for that. There isn’t one specific event that this movie is based on, but rather it is influenced by multiple murders of multiple backpackers that took place in Australia where the murderer was never found. I guess that might be what makes this kind of creepy for people? They go backpacking a lot and think this might happen to them? This movie certainly isn’t bad or anything, just not my particular taste. A couple of characters that the filmmakers try to get you to connect with, but ultimately don’t, getting tortured and killed. John Jarratt as the backwoods murderer was pretty good and there were some pretty good effects for the torture scenes, but nothing much else did it for me. If you like gritty slasher movies then you’ll probably really dig this movie, but it’s just not really my favorite genre.

Wolfman Moon Scale