Wolf Creek, 2005
Directed by Greg Mc Lean
This film was recommended to me by a professional cameraman, he was initially blown away by the way the film was shot and how some scenes resembled hauntingly beautiful photographs rather than a horror movie.
This film was a refreshing change to other traditional horror movies because while it still followed the conventional horror plot, it also had extra elements that were concurrent to a true- life response to danger. Obviously the situations are not an everyday factor in ones life, but the way in which the characters reacted to the villain and desperately struggled to get away using a car (instead of pointlessly hiding or running away) made the film even more convincing.
Greg McLean directed the horror movie and showed a sensible person (as a victim) trying to escape a mad man, it showed how the spectator would react (or how they think they would react), so instead of shouting at the on-screen victim and telling her or him not to be so stupid, the chase is far more compelling because the viewer really wants the victim to escape and continues to watch on the edge of their seat as each person tries desperately to escape and continuously fails throughout.
Interview: Wolf Creek Director Greg McLean
By Dave Dreher Nov 30, 2005, 20:04
From HouseofHorrors.com
Question: What were the true events that inspired you to write Wolf Creek?
Greg McLean: I wrote the original story five, six years ago and it was pretty much a standard horror thriller set in the Outback. Then over the years I heard about a couple of true cases that happened in Australia, one of them being the Ivan Milat case which is about a serial killer who would pick up hitchhikers on lonely highways and take them out into the woods and do horrific things to them. That case was influential in many ways because is had all of these elements that were so terrifying and scarier than anything I could possibly come up with.
Question: Explain to me your whole approach to on-camera violence, every director within the genre - from Argento to Craven - has one, and each is palpably divergent.
Greg McLean: My approach to the ugliness in Wolf Creek was the same way Mike Leigh would unflinchingly hold the camera on moments of incredibly intense human drama. I thought, what would it be like to do the same thing and hold the camera on someone who’s being tortured? What is it like to not look away? Part of the goal, for me anyway as a storyteller, is to not look away because what we do in our real life is not stare, it’s rude to look at a situation unfold. We tend to look away and go back into our own world. It’s more rare and more interesting to not look away from that darkness - keep the audience looking at it.
Question: That said, were there any scenes in Creek that were particularly difficult to get through?
Greg McLean: At one point while shooting that scene, because the shed was so small, the crew and me had to be outside for the wide shot. It was just Kestie and John in there. I was listening on the headset and watching on the screen the scene unfold and, at one point, I literally sat up from my seat and thought something had gone wrong. I thought John had gone crazy and Kestie really wants to stop. I was going to go running in there, it was really quite bizarre and at the end of the take I ran in there and they were both like, ‘What are you talking about? We’re doing what you asked us to do!’ It was so convincing and so believable I thought he was really hurting her. I reacted how the audience will react, which is: how do I make this stop?!
http://www.houseofhorrors.com/crypt/pages/interviews/printer_250.shtml
