f you believed everything the cinema told you about the Australian outback, you'd expect it to be full with road-tripping drag-queens being chased by mad men in metal shoulder pads and a killer razorback boar, so it's as well then to treat Wolf Creek’s claim to be "based on real events" a healthy dose of skepticism. In fact, Wolf Creek’s backpacker horror is almost total fantasy, casually throwing in references the 90s "backpacker murders" and the disappearance of Peter Falconio (the case of which is still ongoing), and generally put together with as much ethical regard as a pulpy true-life crime paperback. Yet it's also one of the most dark and notorious and Australian films for some years, rivaling The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in blunt brutality, and playing on an almost masochistic fantasy of outback terror lurking outside the safety of the city. Wolf Creek may be a grab-bag of scurrilous serial-killer rumors, but sticking your hand in is only for the brave hearted.

There's little to prepare the viewer for it when we're first introduced to the tanned twenty-somethings who end up heading down the wrong dirt track. Fresh-faced British girls Liz and Christie (Cassandra Magrath and Kestie Morassi) and hunky Aussie chaperone Ben (Nathan Phillips) are having a cheap and cheerful holiday, necking tequila at pool parties and telling stories round the camp fire. There's casual flirting and jokes as they hit the road together to visit the famous crater at Wolf Creek in a cheerful prologue as comfortingly intimate as the sun-drenched daytime Aussie soaps lapped up by British TV viewers. The naive characters and their flat, vacuous dialogue almost will something to come along and puncture this contentment; when nomadic redneck Mick (John Jarrett) does just that, it's so nasty you wish you could hit the undo button. The youngsters become stranded on the road and then separated, and their road trip turns into a primal struggle against a merciless predator. The kids who begin the film on the cusp of adulthood proper end up smattered with blood like newborn babies.


The power of any boogie man depends on if he's got you cornered or not, and Wolf Creek's strength is how it plays off its redneck villain against the widescreen prison of the Australian outback—there are no bars holding our heroes, but nor are there any familiar signs of life, except for that of their would-be killer. A final highway showdown has echoes of Steven Spielberg's Duel, with Mick's death-delivering pick-up lurking on the horizon as the heroes search for a lift back to civilization.

After the onslaught, the coda is something of a disappointment, as the film unsuccessfully tries to suggest real-life veracity for the fictions of the preceding. It's a rather shabby end, but perhaps the visceral action of Wolf Creek simply proved too difficult to neatly package up. The experience of Wolf Creek is like pulling out a battered old video from the shelf, laughing at its naff cheapness, and then finding something unsavory taped over it that glues you to your sofa in sheer terror.