The Film

Two English girls (Cassandra Magrath and Kestie Morassi) hook up with an Australian hunk (Nathan Phillips) during their gap year and, after a night of rowdy partying, head off on a road trip across the Outback. When their car breaks down, however, they cross paths with a jolly local (John Jarratt), and soon find themselves wishing dearly that they hadn't accepted his offer to repair their vehicle...

Wolf Creek is a film of two distinct and very uneven halves. With an overlong first act that lies somewhere between a tourist advertisement for the Australian Outback and a mockumentary charting the travels of three loudmouthed youths, you might be forgiven for assuming it to be little more than a vacuous experiment with a high definition video camera by first-time writer and director Greg McLean. Of course, anyone who has encountered the film's marketing will know that it is, in fact, nothing of the sort: waiting beyond the plodding introductory scenes is an intense exploitation horror flick that evokes the same atmosphere of dread and hopelessness as Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. That's high praise indeed.


Of course, Hooper's film had a similarly slow setup, and it didn't come off any the worse for it. The difference is in the execution rather than the basic premise - both could be effectively summarised as "obnoxious kids head off into the middle of nowhere and run afoul of maniac(s)" - but whereas Hooper from the outset injected a much-needed dose of dread that steadily built up before coming to an explosive head, McLean seems to feel that an opening title card claiming that the film is based "on real events" is sufficient. That's not to say that he fails to include any tension at all in the first half, but the emphasis is definitely on the trio of backpackers, and let's just say that I personally would be loath to spend any time with such a troupe of superficial jackasses. Their drinking, partying, silly songs and bland love triangle are supposed to endear them to us, I'm sure, but part of me was just willing them to vanish into some deep crater, never to be seen again.

Then, just when I'm beginning to give up hope, the film does an abrupt U-turn and turns into a decent little no holds barred horror movie. Its saving grace can be summed up in two words: John Jarratt. Well, that's not entirely fair, but the veteran Australian soap opera actor certainly deserves the lion's share of the credit for making it watchable. His performance as serial killer Mick Taylor is so energetic, so nuanced, so twisted, and so god-damned funny that it almost makes up for the 30 minutes of tedium that have preceded his entrance. In fact, once Jarratt gets to work and McLean begins tightening the screws, the three doofuses who have fallen into Taylor's little trap begin to improve too. In particular, Cassandra Magrath, in the role of Liz Hunter, establishes herself as an effective horror heroine in what initially seems deceptively like the Marilyn Burns role in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. She proves to be feisty and resourceful, even if she does commit a couple of the head-slapping horror faux pas that are always infuriating, even if they are probably an accurate representation of how someone under such intense pressure would act.


With Jarratt chewing the scenery like nobody's business, McLean does a commendable job of not allowing him to overwhelm the film. He does so by way of his low-key photography, with the flat, oversaturated and decidedly video-like aesthetic of the first half giving way to a highly contrasted, desaturated look that constitutes an impressive and largely successful attempt to make digital video look like 16mm film. Clearly owing a great debt to documentary filmmakers, he adopts an unrelenting approach to the violence and sadism perpetrated by Taylor, giving the events a level of honesty that would no doubt have been lost in a glossier, higher budget production.

How much you get out of Wolf Creek will depend on whether or not you are able to stomach the bloated first half, as well as your ability to empathise with the protagonists. With some judicious editing, this could have been a taut and effective exploitation flick. As it is, though, as good as the remaining 50 minutes are, the fact remains that in order to enjoy them, you must be content to slog through 30 minutes of tedium. McLean clearly knows how to deliver a horror movie; it's just a shame Wolf Creek spends so much time pussyfooting before it decides to actually be one.

Note: This American release of the film, labelled the "unrated version", re-inserts two scenes that were removed from the theatrical cut of the film and were, on the UK release, presented as deleted scenes. (This first features Kristy waking up in bed with Ben; the second is an extended sequence with Liz trapped down a well.) These scenes were removed from the final edit by director Greg McLean because he felt that they detracted from the film's overall flow. As such, the version of the film included on this disc is very much an extended version rather than a director's cut.

HD DVD Presentation

Note: the image quality section of this review was written by DVD Times hardware reviewer David Mackenzie.

Wolf Creek is a rarity amongst Western HD DVD releases. Although almost all titles released so far in North America and Europe have used Microsoft's excellent VC-1 video codec solution, the Weinstein Company have chosen MPEG-4 AVC for their releases, also used on most Japanese HD DVDs and a number of Blu-ray titles.

First, I must say how wonderful it is to see an HD DVD that has no edge enhancement whatsoever. The picture, at times, has a wonderfully natural look with no ugly halos surrounding high contrast objects. This is possibly attributable to the fact that this film was shot in 1080p HD (any film grain you see has been added for effect) - meaning that minimal video tomfoolery was performed to get it onto HD DVD. It's pretty neat to think that on an optical disc, you have a copy of this film that has as much resolution as possible!

Of course, that's not the bottom line, because this disc isn't without its problems. The HD DVD has a picture that is still obviously high definition, but at the same time has some flaws poking through the cracks. The first shot of the film shows rippling waves against a shore, and has visible compression problems, even when viewing on a 720p 32" screen. Stranger still is that parts of the transfer have an "eroded" look to them - points where it's clear that some details are lacking. It's visible on the very first shot and comes and goes throughout the film. From what I gather, this is a method used by the MPEG-4 encoder on complex scenes to try and avoid showing compression artefacts. Yet, there are also some close-up shots that look brilliant, as good as anything I've seen from the format. There are some scenes where the added film grain is represented very nicely with almost no artefacting at all, too. Yes, the keyword here is "variable".

Watching Wolf Creek reminded me very much of the Blu-ray Disc demonstrations I've seen - it has bits that are genuinely impressive, whereas others have a slightly displaced look and lack the "wow" factor and potentially almost-flawless presentation that VC-1 codec titles are sometimes capable of.

The audio comes in English and French flavours, both Dolby Digital-Plus 5.1. A comparison with the Dolby Digital 5.1 track on the UK DVD release reveals increased clarity and allows some of the more subtle sound effects to be appreciated to a greater degree. Most impressive is the use of directional sound for the ambient effects - check out the opening scene to hear seagulls cackling all around you, while the wind blows from some indeterminate position. Dialogue is generally very good, although, especially in the first half, it is at times a little difficult to make out; this, however, is due to the intentionally high level of background noise in many scenes rather than the HD DVD.

English and Spanish subtitles are also provided. English subtitles are also provided for all of the extras except the commentary.

Extras

Wolf Creek was released in the UK on DVD as a 2-disc special edition set, including several bonus features. For the US DVD release, The Weinstein Company retained the majority of the extras, although they did omit a 22-minute interview with John Jarratt, in addition to two of the three deleted scenes, since they had been re-integrated into the film. The good news is that, barring these deleted scenes, which are, naturally, still missing, the HD DVD includes everything that was on the UK DVD.

First up is an audio commentary featuring Greg McLean, who is joined by co-producer/executive producer Matt Hearn and actors Cassandra Magrath and Kestie Morassi. It's not a bad track, but it's not exactly a brilliant one either. Although McLean does take some time to discuss various plot issues and changes that had to be made as a result of the low budget and weather conditions, the track is largely anecdotal, with the two actors doing little more than mentioning how much/little fun they had shooting particular scenes. Also - and this is just a personal niggle - one of the actors clears her throat so many times it eventually becomes annoying.

Beyond the commentary, the most substantial is The Making of Wolf Creek, a fairly comprehensive 50-minute look behind the scenes. All the usual bases are covered, from the casting, to the shooting of the film itself, to the ways in which computer techniques such as digital grading were used to improve the final product. A judicious amount of behind the scenes footage is included, along with interviews with many of the key participants.

A 21-minute interview with actor John Jarratt, who plays Mick Taylor, follows. Jarratt goes into some amount of detail about how he was chosen for the role, how he prepared for it, and his philosophy on the character, although the format of the interview - it's essentially a single uninterrupted recording of Jarratt rambling on about whatever comes into his mind - is both a blessing and a curse.

A solitary deleted scene is also included, a brief moment of comic relief that McLean was, in my opinion, wise to remove. Finally, the US theatrical trailer is provided.

Unfortunately, whoever was in charge of transferring these extras did a very poor job. Being an Australian film, the extras were all quite understandably shot in PAL, and as such a standards conversion was required for the US market (no different from the NTSC to PAL conversion process that happens for every UK release of an American film). Unfortunately, instead of rescaling the image to fit the 720x480 NTSC resolution (as compared to PAL's 720x576), the technicians seem to have simply thrown away the extra 96 lines at the top and bottom of the frame, resulting in the image being vertically stretched and noticeably cropped. The end result is, of course, extremely unprofessional. Not having seen the American standard definition release, I have no idea if it is similarly affected, but my hunch would be that it is.

Overall

As the first HD DVD I've seen from the Weinstein Company, Wolf Creek is a bit of a mixed bag. It has moments that are genuinely impressive, but on other occasions, technical issues that could probably have been avoided get in the way. However, it goes without saying that this is the best the film has ever looked outside a theatrical environment or the original camera recordings, so, if you are HD-capable, this is definitely the version of the film to pick up.

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