REVIEW: Wolf Creek (2014) – Mick’s Back

Runtime: 105 Mins
Rated: R
What To Expect: Mick Taylor doing his patriotic duty

The original is a bit notorious, and aside from being pretty effective as a horror movie, it sparked minor uproar.  Too effective for some pansies.  Roger Ebert famously said of the movie: “It is a film with one clear purpose: To establish the commercial credentials of its director by showing his skill at depicting the brutal tracking, torture and mutilation of screaming young women … I wanted to walk out of the theatre and keep on walking.”  Seems Ebert was taking it a bit too seriously, John Jarratt (Mick Taylor) certainly wasn’t, a superb troll having a ball.  That said, the worst fear about sequels to cult classics (which is what Wolf Creek is!) is that the odds are that they’re going to be shit.  You more than expect it.  Yet while Wolf Creek 2 is not as good as the original, it’s not a bad sequel…

In the sequel deranged nut Mick Taylor is roaming the outback looking for “foreign bastards” to torture, rape and mutilate.  When he finds two German tourists camping in a national park, vengeance naturally must be meted out for “coming out here and shitting in our back yard!”  However, the ongoing atrocity is interrupted by another tourist, this time an Englishman who inadvertently gets the female German killed, whom Taylor was planning to repeatedly rape.  This draws the special ire of the nut, who then chases the “fucking pom” across the Australian outback in a vicious game of cat and mouse.

Director Greg McLean experiments somewhat in the sequel but not much, with the character of Mick Taylor.  He dares to push the character further into the grey area, or about as far as you could probably get away with for a homicial rapist.  The opening scene where the nut is accosted by two dirty cops issuing an undeserved speed ticket sets the tone for the movie – very black humor with Jarratt being the star of the show.  There was never any doubt anyway, the man is funny – in fact I roared with laughter several times throughout this movie.  I think the people who go into movies like this with barf bags should just stop at the fucking door.

Some problems are introduced though, McLean pushes black humor several times too far – not in a controversial sense – rather too far towards conventional comedy.  That’s not what charmed us about the original, you had to wait for the nod and wink in that movie.  It also has some sequel-itus, as in bigger, bolder… explosions and shit.  The weakest part of the movie is the chase scene in the middle.  It’s slightly OTT, at least considering the subject matter.  But boy, does it find it’s feet again in the finale, when Taylor takes his victim back to the lair first seen in the original movie, and puts him to a duel of wits.  It’s creepy, hilarious and disturbing all at once, with Taylor wielding an angle grinder while going on a rant about “foreign vermin”.  It just about saves the movie from its overly simple routine and playing to the audience (well, maybe not all audiences!) throughout the previous 90 minutes.

This is not as good as the original, but it’s worth checking out.  Great drinking movie.  Australian xenophobes will probably cherish it as a classic.