Description from Netflix: Backpackers Rutger and Katarina escape the city for an adventurous vacation in the Australian outback…but their dream trip turns into a nightmare when they run into a bloodthirsty serial killer with a penchant for sadistic games.
My
thoughts:
I
love slasher movies. It’s a well-known
fact about me. And yet I didn’t love the
original Wolf Creek. It took me a while to figure out what I
didn't like about it, but I think I finally nailed it down: it seemed like they
were more interested in making the killer interesting than about fleshing out
the people he was killing. It seems lazy;
like they’re skipping a step. The great
slashers – the icons – didn’t start as the focal point of the movies. Michael Myers. Freddy Krueger. Jason Voorhees. Leatherface.
The movies focused on their victims.
They made us care for the victims.
The idolization of the killers came after. With Wolf
Creek, it felt like they had built up this killer to be interesting and
magnetizing, and forgot to make the victims people worth caring about. If I don't care about the people on the other
end of the knife (or machete, or chainsaw...), the movie loses some of its
heart. This is not necessarily true of
sequels - when most teens are nothing more than cannon fodder - but it's true
of the first in a series. Wolf Creek failed at that most basic
premise.
All
that being said, I was still interested in the sequel. I was curious to see where they would take
it. After all, the first movie was
nothing if not simplistic: seemingly friendly bushman kidnaps, tortures and
kills. It's a basic slasher set-up, if
in a different location than we're used to seeing. Setting it in the vast expanse of Australia
was the most interesting thing about the first movie. Even when you escape, you don't necessarily
have anywhere to run. It lent an extra
air of hopelessness to an already bleak situation.
That
was present again here. Australia makes
for a beautiful setting, but also a terrifying one. Unfortunately, the setting alone does not a
good movie make. Aside from the setting,
this movie had very little going for it.
For
starters, they decided to make Mick Taylor an even bigger presence in this
movie. It was as if they were actively
trying to convince me that Mick Taylor deserved to be the next big slasher icon. They did this by making him talk more. Rattling off one-liners. Saying "funny" things about the
terrible deeds he was committing.
Perhaps this worked for some people, but it didn't do anything for
me. Freddy Krueger didn't go into full
wise-cracking mode until his fourth movie (if you want to say it was his third,
you'll get no argument from me), but he was on an entirely different level from
Mick Taylor from the word "go".
They were going for "wacky and endearing," but all they got
was "annoyingly over-the-top".
Writer/director
Greg McLean has said that "[Mick Taylor was] the most interesting thing
about the first movie." That would
explain the direction this one took.
I
have already fallen into the same trap as the writers. Thus far, I have only focused on Mick
Taylor. So let's talk about his victims
for a second.
We
start with German backpackers Rutger and Katarina (who sort of reminded me of
Lizzy Caplan) hiking to Wolf Creek, camping along a trail, and getting attacked
by Mick Taylor. Rutger is killed and
hacked up while trying to protect Katarina.
(This raises a question. Mick has
a house with a "workshop", so why does he hack-up Rutger out in the
open? It's dark, and the chances that
someone would come across their path is minimal, but there's still a chance
that someone could see the atrocities being committed, especially since Mick
has the huge floodlights on his truck on.
Not hard to miss when you're surrounded by flat land.) Katarina is able to escape and makes it to
the road, where she is discovered by Paul, a handsome British tourist in a
jeep. Paul tries to drive off with
Katarina, but Mick appears and shoots her.
And so, roughly 20 minutes into the movie, who we thought would be our
two main characters are dead. This aspect
reminded me of 2009's Friday the 13th.
What
followed was a series of scenes featuring Paul trying to get away from
Mick. Most of these were terrible. An example: we have seen Paul driving his
jeep off road a lot. It has been
established that his jeep can handle the Australian terrain. And yet there is a long scene in which he is
chased by Mick in a semi truck (which is definitely NOT an all-terrain vehicle),
but for some reason decides to stick to the road. If I haven't made myself clear, the road is
the only place the semi can go. And yet
he stays on the road as Mick tries to kill him with a semi. So, basically, it turned into The Hitcher for about 15 minutes. (Maybe that's why they named one of the
characters Rutger?) “Just go off road,”
I repeatedly screamed at the TV. Paul
never heard my cries.
During
this chase scene, Mick hits/runs over a herd of crossing kangaroos. As he did his, he was spouting off one-liners
like John McClain (if John McClain killed kangaroos instead of
terrorists). This was supposed to be
funny. It most definitely was not.
Again,
this goes back to the lack of connection with Mick. I don't really have any connection to the
character, so why would I like when he runs down kangaroos and makes jokes
about it?
There
were also a fair number of standard slasher complaints. "When you knock him out with a hammer,
make sure to finish the job."
Things of that nature. But, if
you're a fan of slashers, you've become accustomed to overlooking this faulty
logic, so I won’t dwell on them here.
That's
not to say the movie was all bad. The
performance by Ryan Corr (as Paul) was tremendous. There's a long scene of him being terrified,
but also trying to humor Mick. His face
fluctuates seamlessly between laughter and pure terror. It was the best scene in the movie, and Corr
carried it. (Fun fact: Corr had a very
small part in Where The Wild Things Are.)
I
also really liked Mick's lair. It was
filled with terrible tools to do terrible things. It was a small, claustrophobic room that
offered little chance of escape.
Because, even if you did escape out of the oh-so-tempting door, all you
would run into would be a series of winding corridors filled with previous
victims, bloodthirsty dogs, and booby-traps.
These corridors weren't on the level of House of 1000 Corpses, Texas
Chainsaw Massacre 2 or True Detective,
but they were still pretty creepy.
This
wasn't a very good movie. There were a
few redeeming qualities, but not many.
If you liked the first one, you'll probably like this one. The key to enjoying this movie hinges on one
question: do you like Mick Taylor? If
you do, you'll like it. If you don't,
your views will probably be a lot like mine.
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