Wolf Creek Review

I watched this movie by myself. Mainly because no one really wanted to watch it with me. Haley saw it in the theater and basically said it sucked.

Well, she's wrong.

And here's why she's wrong. She's not a guy. This movie was meant to scare guys. Not the girls--even though, by the end of the movie, its the girls who get the worst of it. I mean who hasn't seen a movie where the chick is tied to a pole, tortured, terrorized, then eventually slashed, burnt, or shot to death? In our weird society nowadays, those kinds of movies are what they have for the ABC After-School Special. This movie was about emasculating men. And that's scary.

There are two parts in this movie that make any male viewer uptight. I'm not even talking about the part where Ben is hammered to a board and hung up with barbed wired. Hell, any guy that's been through a divorce or has a particularly opinionated mother-in-law has suffered through worse than that. The first harrowing scene is when Ben and his two female companions go into the Emu gas station/bar to pay for their gas and a couple of Aussie degenerates start making talk of taking the two girls and raping them. They ask Ben for their permission to do this. Well, the two Aussie guys look like the type that eat kittens for breakfast with their coffee, so Ben thinks it through and makes light of it--avoiding a physical altercation with folks bigger and imminently more lethal than him. But, who among the guys, has ever felt that before? Being put on the line to fight and maybe die in a miserable situation? When it happens, what will you do? What kind of courage will you show? Or will you cower and allow yourself to be bullied and your women taken?

The second frightful scene is when the car dies (or is sabotaged) at Wolf Creek National Park. Ben is clueless as to how to fix it and they are like a million miles from civilization. Well, until the Aussie guy shows up to help fix it and you can probably guess by now that he does more than just fix the car. I don't care if you are just going to Walgreen's to pick up acne medicine and a few batteries for your Ipod, it's scary when your vehicle just won't work--and you don't know what to do about it. Especially, if you have women involved. They expect to be protected. Like the two female companions said, when Ben was talking to the Aussie guy about fixing it, "It's a bloke thing."

So, the movie pits an evil serial killer against a guy and two girls. At first, the girls look like they will make it out. But hope fades as the guy with more guy know-how, seals the deal. The guy without the guy know-how, ends up crucified to a board, wrapped in barbed wire. He makes it out and is only saved when a kindly couple picks him up from the side of the road, helpless as a baby. He can't even make enough sense to the authorities so that they can track down the killer.

Scary, ain't it?