THursday, April 13, 2006

Wolf Creek – 2005

     This Australian Independent movie certainly made a tidy return for its investors. Let’s see, invest $1M, make $16M in the US alone. Hmmmm, not too shabby. And that’s what your gonna say when you watch this cross between Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Psycho.  There have been a lot of these “young people get off the beaten track, and are attacked by crazies” recently. But all in all, this one is pretty good.

First off, the guy who plays the psycho, John Jarratt, does an absolutely awesome job of creating a initially likeable, amiable character who turns out to be an utter nutter. I mean, this guy has to be the friendliest psychopath I’ve ever seen. An outstanding job by this obviously talented Australian actor.

Next, there’s plenty of blood (I’m so glad they didn’t go for a PG-13 here) and a pretty fair amount of gore (although the hacked off fingers were pretty fake. Who else besides me is tired of this “swing a blade, and it miraculously hacks off four fingers, while whipping thru the air” bit. I mean, come on. There is absolutely NO WAY any blade short of a monofilament could sever bone with so little resistance. And before you say it, NO, it could hit between the bones for all the fingers, as those joints don’t line up. Anywho, end rant). And some of the actions of the characters is pretty rough. So this is not a flick for the kiddies, or the weak of stomach.

The disc is nicely apportioned as well. There are subtitles (very helpful for those Australian accents), a commentary featuring the Director, the producer, and both female leads. There’s an hour long Making Of featurette that will show you everything you ever wanted to know about the making of a low budget movie in Australia, and one short deleted scene.

All in all, a great rent. Buy if you collect such things.

Four beers out of five (yeah, of course there’s some nudity. What are you, crazy?)