Wolf Creek 2

I can still remember watching Wolf Creek. I was about 15, it was late at night and the house was empty. A 90 minute film took me about two and a half hours to watch because I kept having to pause it and take breaks. I remember being so powerfully affected by it that I couldn't sleep after, not out of fear, but disgust. The idea that Australia's casual xenophobia could potentially manifest itself into such an evil identity as Mick Taylor who is, excluding the serial killer caveat, not really saying anything you don't hear on a train or at a pub, was unbelievably confronting. And then to take it so far as to suggest that he may be more than human, that he may be an intrinsic part of the landscape he inhabits, it left me feeling sick and fearful of the country I call home. But more than anything, it left me dumbstruck that Australian cinema was capable of such a gut-wrenching, effective horror experience. Imagine my surprise when a couple of years later, I sat down to the excellent documentary Not Quite Hollywood and discovered that through the 70s and 80s, Australia was making a lot of them. And they fucking rocked. When the trailer for Wolf Creek 2 was released, I was so excited. It seemed director Greg McLean was going even further down the exploitative route, removing much of the tense, brutal claustrophobia of the first film and replacing it with more of a wide-open, highway thriller vibe. I sat down to it with the hope that, in view of this lighter approach, it wouldn't completely abandon the themes of the first film, and...fuck. Be careful what you wish for.

Wolf Creek 2 is unashamedly a textbook horror sequel. The boogeyman takes front and center stage, the deaths are bigger, bloodier and in much higher frequency and, as is often the result, the story disappears. This movie is the equivalent of a greatest hits album: it's a disparate collection of ideas for murder propped up by various paper-thin cardboard cutouts referred to by the movie business as "characters". Wolf Creek spent almost an hour developing its characters so that the creeping realisation that there's no way they could ever survive this ordeal hurt even more. Wolf Creek 2 spends about seven minutes. Throughout the film, you're introduced to the German couple who are sympathetic because they draw love hearts in the dirt, the British surfer who's sympathetic because there's no reception for him to call his girlfriend and the old couple who are sympathetic because they're old. At some point, they all fall upon Mick Taylor's path and he may or may not present himself as a nice bloke before chasing them down and putting a knife in their spine and a bullet in their head. Rape, torture, or a speech about foreigners being vermin are optional. Rinse, repeat and escalate until 90 minutes then fuck off.

Those of you with keener sensibilities may be able to tell I'm not the biggest fan of Wolf Creek 2. But it wasn't all reprehensible dog shit, so let's get the good out of the way quickly. First, as much as I'm about to condemn his character, you cannot for a second fault John Jarratt's performance as Mick Taylor. No matter what the scene calls for, he jumps into it with complete conviction. As juvenile and vile as his character becomes, it's acted perfectly. Next, the film has an excellent opening that toys with an interesting idea. Mick Taylor is a product of a country rife with racism. He sees the foreigners he kills as no different to the pigs he makes a living on. But that level of territorial prejudice can exist internally as well. The film opens with two cops on highway patrol. Mick drives past and they make note of his southern license plate. Though he's driving under the speed limit, they pull him over anyway to give him a hard time for having the gall to head outside of his boundaries, as if they ever existed. Of course, Mick slaughters them, but it's an interesting concept that would have benefited from further exploration. Praise continues with the gorgeous cinematography that simultaneously captures the beauty and danger of Australia's landscape. It continues to run with the idea presented by films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock, Long Weekend and Wake In Fright that out here there's a different set of rules, and the odds will never be stacked in your favour. And finally, the car chase alluded to in the trailer is a gloriously tense tribute to Mad Max and Road Games with amazing and, more importantly, real stunts. It also features a moment that I'm ashamed to admit I found more than a little funny, featuring some startled kangaroos, a truck and a radio playing 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'.  

In terms of the bad, I'm tempted to say, "Everything else" and be done with it, but for argument's sake, let's continue. On paper, Wolf Creek 2 isn't doing anything that the first film didn't. Where it falls apart is the attitude with which it presents itself, and with what it expects you to take away from it. This film is, I imagine, a similar result to what would happen if the idea of Wolf Creek was pitched to a sixteen year old who thinks Doodleburger's Alf Stewart videos are the best thing ever. Now don't get me wrong, I find them funny, but there's this little thing called context. The effectiveness of Doodleburger's videos comes from disgusting and profane language being lip-synced perfectly to a beloved character of a good and wholesome television show. Wolf Creek 2 attempts to achieve the same level of humour while also giving you the same film as its predecessor. But we're not in on the joke. It thinks it can make Mick Taylor funnier and edgier by having him say "cunt" fifteen times. When he attempts to rape his victim in the first film, it's appalling but it's within context. When he pulls down the German backpacker's pants and shouts, "Cookies!" in this installment, it's just appalling. When he's shot the old lady in the back for no reason other than housing his victim and demanding that he leave their property to the tune of 'The Blue Danube Waltz', and he's standing over her body alluding to raping her if she hadn't fucked things up before shooting her in the head and doing a rifle twirl, I wanted to walk out. A friend of mine did. Later in the film, Mick has the British surfer tied up in a chair. He's delivering disgustingly xenophobic diatribes about how in danger his country is of foreign vermin in between grinding the Englishman's fingers off every time he gets a piece of Australian trivia wrong, filling up his drink, and singing 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport'. Following that scene, he holds up a dress and says that the "Pommy bastard" will have to do now that his lady friend is dead. "I won't be your fucking faggot," he spits through blood and Homophobic Mick chokes him out at the very thought of it being gay. It'd be edgy if it wasn't so fucking stupid. I'm a firm believer that there is nothing, including all of the horrible acts and beliefs I've talked about in this review, that doesn't have the capacity to be funny. But it has to actually be funny.

There's a few moments in Wolf Creek 2 where one of its multiple foreign protagonists is trying to hitch a ride. Be they backpacking or bloodied up, nobody stops, prompting them to wonder what's wrong with this country. It could be this particular area is knowledgeable and fearful of their pig-shooting boogeyman, or it could be that Greg McLean is trying to have a bit of a chat about Australia's current immigration policies. But in the end, Wolf Creek 2 is just too dopey: it wants to deliver a film that salutes the first film and treads new ground, but its method to achieve that is to remove maturity and push everything into excess, and the result is a morally empty maggot of a film that says nothing. It's a film that's clearly satirising the sort of attitude that runs rampant through Australia, but it's so fucking moronic in its delivery that it winds up kind of championing it. I left Wolf Creek fearful of my backyard; of the almost supernatural powers it seems to wield and of the dangers inherent to my country's attitude towards outsiders. I left Wolf Creek 2 fearful of how many racist memes and "Holy fuk Mick Taylor 4 PM cunt!" Facebook statuses I was going to see posted by the "Fuck Off, We're Full" generation. I think there's a definite silver lining here though. First off, this movie's going to make a lot of money. Everybody saw Wolf Creek once it came out on home release and everybody loved it and hated it in equal measure, so it's within reason that everybody's going to see Wolf Creek 2, be it out of fandom or morbid curiosity. And even if it's a bad one, it's still an Ozploitation flick. It's definite success will pave the way for more and more Australian filmmakers to tap back into our forgotten past and introduce audiences to the batshit crazy and awesome good times we used to be capable of. Even from Greg McLean, who followed up Wolf Creek with the equally excellent big croc flick, Rogue, and whose third installment of this series I would still happily catch should he decide to give it a crack. And second, I really think Wolf Creek 2 should be the centerpiece of Australia's next tourism campaign. So strong am I in my belief that I went to the trouble to do up a concept.