I'm not a particularly squeamish person. Growing up on a pig farm, I've seen my fair share of dead animals, maggots, gruesome injuries, etc. Most of the time, what really scares the crap out of me is the unexplained, those gaps in knowledge that allow the imagination to run wild (and your dreams to become nightmares). So it was going to be a hard sell for any horror film to convince me that not only was it scary/horrible/visceral but also realistic. Wolf Creek (2005), did just that for me and I swore never to watch another "true story" based on our Australian outback (a little too close to home). I changed my mind after 6 years when my boyfriend convinced me to hold his hand whilst watching Wolf Creek 2, the sequel to the original box office smash. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you see it, I was very little disturbed by the new Greg McClean feature.
Wolf Creek 2 introduces yet again to that amazing spectacle of a character - Mick Taylor. Mick's been doing just fine for himself after walking away scott-free in last film and has taken up his usual hobbies of hunting pigs, trapping prey, and shooting whatever crosses his pristine Australian land (none of these are animals mind you). Yes, his fastidious attitude towards "Australian pride" is still rampant and its clear from the beginning of the film, after Mick knocks off two German backpackers, that he is not happy with the latest influx of tourists and immigrants. The second and third act follows Ryan, a young British surfer who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when he attempts to rescue one of the luckless Germans escape Mick. Ryan inadvertently finds himself caught up in Mick's sick fun with the rest of the film following the two in an extravagant game of "cat and mouse" ending with Mick carefully extracting himself yet again from his wrongdoings, leaving Ryan in the lurch.
The film wouldn't be complete without tons of fake blood; hacksaws and pliers, or big brutish vehicles (this time in the form of a semi-trailer); and for this it delivers well yet too predictably for this cynical viewer. I, like many of my audience constituents, have seen enough gore and violence on YouTube and the news to be truly shocked anymore by just blood and guts. We need real horror - in-your-face, nightmarishly disturbing horror - which just wasn't there in WC2. It may have been the delay between the original and the sequel, the disturbances during production, or the addition of a new writing partner in the form of Aaron Sterns that broke the successful equation the team had so carefully developed in 2005. Either way, I wouldn't recommend this film to those who were die-hard fans of the original lusting for another round of Mick's classic lines and laughter, nor those with a faint stomach. The scene between Mick and the two Germans even managed to make this pig farmer's daughter squeal, just a little.
Wolf Creek 2 introduces yet again to that amazing spectacle of a character - Mick Taylor. Mick's been doing just fine for himself after walking away scott-free in last film and has taken up his usual hobbies of hunting pigs, trapping prey, and shooting whatever crosses his pristine Australian land (none of these are animals mind you). Yes, his fastidious attitude towards "Australian pride" is still rampant and its clear from the beginning of the film, after Mick knocks off two German backpackers, that he is not happy with the latest influx of tourists and immigrants. The second and third act follows Ryan, a young British surfer who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when he attempts to rescue one of the luckless Germans escape Mick. Ryan inadvertently finds himself caught up in Mick's sick fun with the rest of the film following the two in an extravagant game of "cat and mouse" ending with Mick carefully extracting himself yet again from his wrongdoings, leaving Ryan in the lurch.
The film wouldn't be complete without tons of fake blood; hacksaws and pliers, or big brutish vehicles (this time in the form of a semi-trailer); and for this it delivers well yet too predictably for this cynical viewer. I, like many of my audience constituents, have seen enough gore and violence on YouTube and the news to be truly shocked anymore by just blood and guts. We need real horror - in-your-face, nightmarishly disturbing horror - which just wasn't there in WC2. It may have been the delay between the original and the sequel, the disturbances during production, or the addition of a new writing partner in the form of Aaron Sterns that broke the successful equation the team had so carefully developed in 2005. Either way, I wouldn't recommend this film to those who were die-hard fans of the original lusting for another round of Mick's classic lines and laughter, nor those with a faint stomach. The scene between Mick and the two Germans even managed to make this pig farmer's daughter squeal, just a little.
