Greg McLean's international horror smash follows three aimless, amiable road-trippers as they party their way through the sun-baked Outback, drinking, flirting, and taking in the sights. Their luck begins to turn after their car breaks down and they encounter a seemingly gregarious, friendly good ol' boy (John Jarratt) who offers to help them out. They initially view the stranger with benign condescension, as a colorful Crocodile Dundee surrogate, but they come to learn much too late that relentless, primal evil lies behind his amiable, just-one-of-the-blokes demeanor.
Wolf Creek is atypically structured for a horror film. There's no onscreen violence at all in its first hour, just a gradual ratcheting up of atmosphere and a vague paranoia about what horrors the open roads might contain. Then the bloodshed and carnage begin and don't let up. In an impressive feature-length debut, McLean eschews overt stylization for sweaty, grindhouse realism in the vein of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Wolf Creek is the kind of well-executed sleazefest that makes audiences feel not just creeped-out but downright dirty, as if it would take a three-hour-long shower just to wash all the grit and grease away. For Fangoria fans for whom a visceral sense of stomach-churning disgust is the best possible response to a horror film, Wolf Creek is a delightfully sick Christmas present from the scuzziest regions of Down Under. Everyone else is duly warned.
