Wolf Creek

(2005, Greg McLean)

Loosely based on a handful of Australian murder cases (such as the Snowtown Murders, and the Sydney Backpacker Murders), Wolf Creek is a horror story about three friends whose car mysteriously breaks down in the middle of the Outback, forcing them to accept a lift from a man who turns out to be a serial torturer / killer.
It goes without saying that this is not an entirely original idea. But novelty (or lack thereof) is not really an issue with this kind of film. The "Stranded in the Wilderness with Psychopaths" theme, established by such classics as Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Deliverance, has been reiterated so many times that it has really become a horror genre in its own right (some recent additions to which include: the poor but not-entirely-terrible mainstream remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre; the ridiculous and uninspired Wrong Turn; the massively underrated League of Gentlemen-esque Calvaire; the disappointingly twist-ended Haute Tension; and, assuming it counts as belonging to the genre in question, Eli Roth's powerfully effective torture-fest, Hostel.) Making a film within this genre is like recording a new version of a jazz standard. The fact that the tune has been played before doesn't matter - what matters is whether the new interpretation does something creative and worthwhile with the old theme.
McLean's variation on this particular theme is (one or two minor complaints aside) outstanding. The first part of the film does an incredible job of generating two essential ingredients: tension and realism. Cool, sombre cinematography in conjunction with an unsettlingly ominous-sounding piano-&-strings based score help to build up - at a slow, measured pace - a powerful sense of foreboding and paranoia (the feeling that you're about to witness something that's almost too much to bear is palpable long before anything unpleasant has actually happened), while credible, naturalistic performances from the entire cast contribute to a solid sense of reality. By the time the horror begins in earnest, the viewer has been optimally primed to feel the shock of it like a punch in the chest (an effect that's hard to mention without referencing Takashi Miike's masterclass in priming the viewer for shock: Ōdishon). From this point on, the film is as gruelling, horrific, and bleak as it ought to be, and maintains high levels of tension with some lone-highway-cat-and-mouse sequences reminiscent of Duel and The Hitcher.
The only significant problem with the film derives from the fact that the point of view of the protagonists is used to define and constrain the point of view offered to the viewer. This is an effective technique insofar as it contributes to an overall sense of claustrophobia and confinement, but it means that when McLean wants the viewer to be able to pause and linger over the surroundings, this has to be achieved by having the characters pause and linger - which, given the situation they are in, is implausible and frustrating to watch. (Other frustrations include the occasional recurrence of the perrenial horror-viewer's complaint: "Surely you'd try to find something to use as a rudimentary weapon at this point?").
Minor criticisms aside, Wolf Creek is beautifully shot and edited, and achieves its horrific effects with surprisingly little reliance on gore. This may be a disappointment to gorehounds, but it really isn't a film about the horror of gore. It's about the horror of pain, of suffering, and of what one human being is capable of doing to another.

Wolf Creek @ IMDb(UK)