Wolf Creek
John Jarrett, Cassandra Magrath, Andy McPhee
There are defining moments in your life. Mine came facedown on my belly, praying to God that the shadowy figure in the window could not see me. Over 30 minutes of pounding on door, peering through windows, and calling my name – pure terror – as I laid there trying not to move even though my dog thought I was playing some kind of game and then proceeded to waste half his spit on the soles of my feet and the back of my neck. I could not move. The slightest flinch, reflex, and I would be found out. Who had me acting like a Senator whose phone number has just been found by investigators at the top of Jack Abramoff’s speed dial list? An autistic boy did. I wish I was joking. At one point in my life, I had a 500-pound bench press, and an autistic child had me spread eagled on the floor. The kid is great, a real credit to his parents, who have done a wonderful job of raising him. The problem is, he loves cars and has probably collected every auto manual in town. For some unknown reason, he loves my car and likes to sit in it, asking me questions that even the best gear-head on the planet would have trouble answering about it. His father has told me to just tell the child no if I am busy, but I cannot be mean to a handicapped kid. I have enough trauma memories from my childhood. When I was in 1st grade, I groomed and trimmed off all the whiskers of the barn cats (No one told me that a cat’s whiskers help them with their balance. I thought I was doing a good thing. Yet, I still wake up with visions of kittens stumbling around and bumping into hay bales like drunken sailors on a 3 day shore leave.), I don’t need to be adding “cruelty to a challenged individual” to my resume for head mop boy in hell. Yet, as I lay there, I started to make a list of all the things I was afraid of. Some are silly, like once a month I have to put on a swimsuit when I put my pooch in the shower to get rid of doggie stink. I have this fear that, if I didn’t put a swimsuit on, I might have a brain aneurysm or slip and hit my head, falling on and crushing the dog, then, at my funeral, people standing over the casket would say, “I heard he was found naked with the pet.” I am living in fear that a couple of my early girlfriends will discover that the really nice jewelry I bought them really came from a pawnshop and that only the boxes came from Sachs Fifth Ave. Public toilets give me the willies, especially after watching a documentary about how rats can crawl up sewer lines and my own juvenile delinquent past involving a toilet seat, superglue, and someone’s backside. Thanks to Steven Spielberg, I am afraid of sharks even though I live in Iowa.
We live in the greatest country in the world. (On a side note, as a nation let’s drop the whole “constantly mentioning how we are the greatest nation in the world” act, it shows insecurity and is annoying. If you don’t believe me, just ask yourself, if you went home every night and your spouse met you at the door with the words, “I am the greatest,” even if it was true, how many days would pass before you would want to re-enact Jimmy Cagney’s pushing the grapefruit in Mae Clarke’s face in Public Enemy?) Yet, our politicians and media have realized that the best way to get you to do, what they want you to do, is fear. In the 19th and early 20th century, Americans rubbed their hands together and lamented how lawless immigrants who were clinging to their native customs might destroy our democracy… almost the same words used by their offspring when they talk about Mexicans today. Blacks were beaten, humiliated, and lynched to “keep them in their place” because segregationists worked on good people’s fears… almost the same arguments used about homosexuality today. A communist underneath every bed has been replaced with a terrorist. Thousands of Japanese Americans behind barbwire have been replaced by thousands of Muslim Americans who have been taken off the street without due process. Fear works. It got George W. Bush reelected. I wasn’t the only one who noticed the way the color coded terrorist alert changed so often during the 2004 campaign. There were a couple of times I suspected that someone dropped a little acid in my diet Mountain Dew, I was seeing so many colors. The media uses the same methods to get you to watch their programs and news broadcasts. Between sexual predators, limes disease, killer bees, and carcinogens in your food, turn on the television and find out what might kill you today. Americans are getting sick worrying about their health. Even Hollywood is getting into the act. In the 1950s, a number of the horror and sci-fi movies were just veiled tales hiding Communists threats and nuclear war. In the 60s, we were taught to fear the men in the gray flannel suit, in our Stepford wives world. A decade later, the likes of Halloween and Texas Chainsaw reminded us to fear the stranger. While your minister likes to pontificate that the stranger might be Jesus, Hollywood reminds us that there is just as likely a chance that he will be wearing our ass for a hat after he kills us. In the 80s, not only did we have to worry about strangers, but also those close to us, whether they be our mistresses (Fatal Attraction), husbands (Sleeping With the Enemy), roommate (Single White Female), or even our own children (The Good Son).
The Australian tourist industry is worried that Americans will be less likely to visit their country after watching the horror movie Wolf Creek, especially because the studio and makers of the film claim it is “based on real events.” Much like Rush Limbaugh’s analysis of daily events, the smart audience member knows that fact based claims in cinema are as accurate as a spelling bee between George W. Bush and Dan Quayle. Writer and director Greg McLean got his idea for the movie from the infamous “backpacker murders” in the 90s by serial killer Ivan Milat and the murder of British tourist Peter Falconio in the Northern Territory by drug dealer Bradley John Murdoch, but that is where any resemblance to historic events ends. The claim of historic roots in more of a wink and nod to horror fans of the original Texas Chainsaw Murder which also claimed to be based on real events. Without giving anything important away, the movie opens with three British tourists Ben (Nathan Phillips), Liz (Cassandra Magrath), and Kristy (Kestie Morassi) whose vehicle breaks down on a visit to the meteor created crater in Western Australia called Wolf Creek (the real name of the location is Wolfe Creek). Stuck in the middle of nowhere, an Aussie named John (Mick Taylor) comes across the trio and agrees to help the strangers by towing their car to his home, and like the Republican National Convention, let the thrill killing begin.
This movie doesn’t plow any new ground in the horror genre, but as an ode to horror films of the 1970s, it works. Like usual, Ebert and Roper are wrong. It was the best horror film of 2005 (which is not saying anything). Like Saw, 28 Days Later, Dog Soldiers, and numerous Japanese films, there has to be a growing concern in Hollywood that best horror feasts are being made on shoestring budgets in other countries or by independent studios.
Making a horror film should be real easy, and why Hollywood cannot do it is beyond me. Whether it is germs, bird flus, marriage, terrorists, Americans have become almost as silly as Howard Hughes walking around with Kleenex boxes on his feet because of their irrational fear of so many things. All a movie has to do is exploit one of these fears and you have money in the bank. Well, I am not going to play that game anymore. Screw the fear thing. I am not a wimp anymore. I’m tough, one of the last he-men left in America and I don’t fear anything anymore… except maybe a couple women in my family, okay, several… all of them, most of my ex-girlfriends, a girl from Arizona that I asked out several years back, which caused her to panic and then me to panic in return, her mother, etc.. [Rest of this column is cut. The big sissy’s stuff is just too nauseating to print. Pub.]
Verdict: Best Horror Film of 2005/ a B+