Wolf Creek (film)
Wolf Creek is a 2005 Australian horror film written, co-produced and directed by Greg McLean and starring John Jarratt, Nathan Phillips, Cassandra Magrath and Kestie Morassi. Its plot concerns three backpackers who find themselves taken captive and subsequently hunted by Mick Taylor, a serial killer, in the Australian outback. The film was ambiguously marketed as being "based on true events", and its plot bore elements reminiscent of the real-life murders of backpackers by Ivan Milat in the 1990s and Bradley Murdoch in 2001, both of whom McLean used as inspiration for the screenplay.
Produced on a budget of $1.1 million, Wolf Creek was shot in South Australia, almost exclusively on high-definition video. It had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2005. It was given a cinema release in Ireland and the United Kingdom in September 2005, followed by a general Australian release in November, apart from the Northern Territory, out of respect for the pending trial arising from the murder of Peter Falconio. In the United States and Canada, it was released on Christmas Day 2005, distributed by Dimension Films.
Wolf Creek received mixed reviews from film critics, with several, such as Roger Ebert and Manohla Dargis, criticising it for its unrelenting depictions of violence. Other publications, such as Variety and Time Out, praised the film's exploitation film aesthetics, with the latter calling its straightforward depiction of crime and violence "taboo-breaking". The film was nominated for seven Australian Film Institute awards, including Best Director. In 2010, it was included in Slant Magazines list of the 100 best films of the decade. The movie successfully launched a titular franchise including a sequel, a television series continuation which ran from 2016 to 2017, and a legacy sequel in pre-production and scheduled to release in 2026.
Plot
In 1999, two British tourists, Liz Hunter and Kristy Earl, are backpacking across Australia with Ben Mitchell, an Australian friend. Ben buys a dilapidated car for their journey from Broome to Cairns, Queensland via the Great Northern Highway.The trio makes a stop at Wolf Creek National Park. Hours later, they discover that their watches have stopped and the car will not start. After dark, a man named Mick Taylor comes across them and offers to tow them to his camp to repair the car. The group goes with him to 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 their car. He then gives the group water which causes them to fall unconscious.
Liz awakens gagged and tied in a shed. She breaks free and hears Mick torturing Kristy in a garage; it is implied that Mick has sexually assaulted her. Liz sets the now-dismantled car on fire to distract him, and goes to help Kristy. When Mick returns, she shoots him with his rifle, the bullet hitting him in the neck. The women attempt to flee in Mick's ute. Mick stumbles out of the garage and shoots at them before giving chase. The women evade him by pushing his ute off a cliff before returning to the site to get another car. Liz leaves a sobbing Kristy outside, telling her to escape on foot if Liz does not return in five minutes.
Liz enters another garage and discovers Mick's large stock of cars and travellers' possessions, including video cameras. She watches the playback on one of them and is horrified to see Mick "helping" other travellers stranded at Wolf Creek. She picks up Ben's camera and notices Mick's ute in the footage; he was following them long before they got to Wolf Creek. She gets into a car but Mick appears in the backseat and stabs her with a bowie knife. Liz crawls out and Mick slices three of her fingers off, then severs her spinal cord, paralyzing her. He interrogates her as to Kristy's whereabouts.
By dawn, Kristy has reached a highway and is discovered by a passing motorist. He attempts to help her but is shot dead by Mick with a hunting rifle. Mick gives chase, prompting Kristy to take off in the dead man's car. Kristy sideswipes Mick's car into a ditch when he pulls up alongside and begins to get away, but Mick emerges and shoots out her back tyre, causing her in turn to crash into a ditch. She attempts to crawl away, but is shot dead. Mick bundles the bodies into the back of the dead motorist's car and torches it.
Ben, whose fate has been unknown until now, awakens nailed to a mock crucifix in a mine shaft. He extracts himself and enters the camp in early daylight. He escapes into the outback, but becomes dehydrated and passes out beside a dirt road. He is discovered by a Swedish couple who take him to Kalbarri, where he is airlifted to a hospital.
A series of title cards states that despite several police searches, no trace of Liz or Kristy has ever been found. Early investigations into the case were disorganised, hampered by confusion over the location of the crimes, a lack of physical evidence, and the alleged unreliability of the only witness. After four months in police custody, Ben was cleared of suspicion. The film ends with Mick walking into the sunset with his rifle.
Cast
Production
Inspiration and screenplay
Writer-director Greg McLean wrote the screenplay for Wolf Creek in 1997. The original screenplay resembled a straightforward slasher film, and McLean was ultimately displeased with the final product. After seeing media on serial killer Ivan Milat, McLean was inspired to rewrite the screenplay. He later said in subsequent interviews that he crafted the character of Mick Taylor based on archetypal "famous Australian exports" such as Steve Irwin, combined with darker national figures, such as Milat, a sadistic killer who murdered seven people in New South Wales between 1989 and 1993. McLean’s revised script was significantly anchored in the character of Mick Taylor: "The movie was really about, 'What would it be like to be stuck in this incredibly isolated place with the most evil character you can possibly imagine, who is also distinctly Australian?'", McLean commented in 2006. Additionally, the July 2001 abduction of British tourist Peter Falconio and the assault of his girlfriend Joanne Lees by Bradley John Murdoch in the Northern Territory was cited as an influence. The film contains several oblique references to these crimes, including the setting of Taylor's mining camp, which is called "Navithalim Mining Co.", named for the reverse spelling of "Milat Ivan".Casting
John Jarratt was cast in the role of Mick Taylor after having a meeting with McLean; Jarratt would later recall being significantly impressed by the screenplay, and McLean knew "within ten minutes" of their meeting that he was the right actor for the role. Cassandra Magrath was cast as Liz, as McLean felt she had a "relatable quality" that the character required. Nathan Phillips was cast in the role of Ben; McLean had known Phillips prior, as they had met while preparing to work on a project that ultimately fell through. Kestie Morassi was cast as Kristy after a different actress had to drop out of the film. Incidentally, Morassi was scheduled to take a personal backpacking trip abroad when she was offered the role.Filming
Wolf Creek was a considerably low-budget production, made for around A$1.4 million, with a minimal crew. Producer David Lightfoot stated that the filmmakers wanted to "mak a 5 million dollar film on a 1 million dollar budget". The film was shot digitally on the HDCAM format and was mostly handheld. Filming took place over approximately five weeks in Australia's winter months of 2004 almost entirely in South Australia. Principal photography began on May 24, 2004, and was completed in June 2004.The film is set in a real location; however, the actual meteorite crater location is called "Wolfe Creek", and is located in northern Western Australia. The sequences in which the three main characters ascend the edge of crater were shot on a nondescript hillside in South Australia. Aerial shots of the crater, however, show the genuine Wolfe Creek crater. The beachfront scenes in the first fifteen minutes of the film were shot in Adelaide, standing in for Broome.
Several strange occurrences happened during the production. 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 shooting script. According to McLean, the fact that it was raining and gloomy in an otherwise dry, sunny desert area gave the sequences a feel of "menace".
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, 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.
Since the film had a relatively low budget, many of the action scenes involved the real actors; for example, after running through the outback barefoot 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 was actually being tortured.
Post-production
The original cut of Wolf Creek ran 104 minutes; however, 5 minutes of the film were excised in post-production. The surplus footage in this cut included an additional scene at the beginning of the film after the party sequence, 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 McLean, this scene was cut from the film after test screenings because it was "simply too much", along with all of the other gruesome events that had taken place prior.
That being said, this scene is uncut as of 2023 on Netflix.