For a while now, I've been complacent in the belief that I'd seen it all with regards to cinematic depravity and excess. I was 12 years old when I first saw Alex Murphy's hand (and arm and head) blown off, witnessed his subsequent bloody retribution on the incomparable Clarence Boddicker and his minions then, much to my parents' chagrin, wanted to watch it again. I looked on with horrified amusement the sheer gall of the Japanese
Ginipiggu films as they took simulated violence to levels so realistic and graphic that Charlie Sheen reported one to the FBI as a snuff movie. I rolled my eyes all the way through
Salo as it justified utterly unnecessary coprophagia scenes with pretentious pseudo-political philosophy. I laughed out loud at the storm of intestinal delights that was
Ichi the Killer. But, judging from some reactions to recently watched films, I'm of two minds about all this. Either I'm growing old and soft. Or a few filmmakers in the 21st century (only a few, mind you) are looking back to their predecessors in the 1970s (back when 42nd Street echoed with the screams of the damned, scored to the music of chainsaws, emanating from the line of grindhouse theatres) and taking the lessons learned to heart and combining them with new budgets/effects/lack of restrictions/jaded sensibilities/better actors to create a new breed of gutchurning movies that not even seasoned cinematic deviants like myself can watch without some level of discomfiture.
The film that prompted this particular post is the recent Australian indie horror
Wolf Creek. This is not to say that its the only one. Things got stirred up by the punch in the face that was Gaspar Noe's
Irreversible, a chronologically reversed French revenge tale that was arguably the first film I can remember that made me wonder why exactly I was putting myself through the ordeal of watching it (which, by the way, is not a condemnation). Others like
Requiem for a Dream and Takeshi Miike's sickening
Visitor Q had similar - though a lot less severe - effects. I reeled in the face of the visceral, postmodern deconstruction of cinematic violence that is Michael Haneke's
Funny Games. Then, in the past couple weeks, I watched two films that left me quite drained after I watched them -
Wolf Creek and
Open Water. The latter is a clever exercise in filmmaking that utilizes the 'less is more' principle to great effect, putting the audience through an experience that is devoid of anything resembling happy thoughts. But, in my opinion, it remains just that. A clever exercise. It hits very hard but the memory fades. This is not true of
Wolf Creek which is the only film (along with
Irreversible and, to some extent,
Funny Games) that honestly made me feel rather violated and nauseous well before its conclusion. I believe
Wolf Creek to be a true follow-up to the early masterpieces like
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and one that has, in many ways, surpassed its ancestors.
The idea behind the film is quite formula. Two British girls and their Australian friend drive across the Australian outback to see a meteorite crater. Their car breaks down. Cue the local necrophiliac sadistic cannibal psychopath with mother issues and a thing for mementos. I've seen a million movies like this and will, no doubt, see another million. But this one is different. For one, nothing happens for the first 40 minutes. This has been a major bone of contention amidst the gorehounds that flocked to this movie, hearing about its rep. To me, these first 40 minutes are key. They're not boring - they're almost akin to a homemade travel documentary that depict the wanderings of these painfully sympathetic young people pre-Wolf Creek. We see them hook up with the pretty boy native on a West Australia beach. We watch the burgeoning attraction between one of the girls and Surfer Dude. We witness the first hesitant kiss in a very well acted scene. We listen to them sing and laugh and bitch their way across the outback, framed by some of the more gorgeous natural vistas put to film. These are not interchangeable serial killer-bait a la Nightmare on Halloween that is Friday the 13th: Michael vs Jason vs Freddy. The perfectly naturalistic performances of these (rather attractive) unknowns combined with the well written dialogue perfectly in tune with a hundred different road trip bullshit sessions this blogger has been involved in, ensure this. It's a basic technique that most horror films don't seem to grasp - if you spend time building up likeable and sympathetic characters that the audience can connect with, the inevitable gorefest that will follow will actually horrify the audience. As opposed to make them laugh or yawn or marvel at the creative killing methods. These three characters could be any of us.
This brings me to the second key to this film's success - the characters act like we would in this situation. Far be it from me to try to say what I would do if I was being stalked by a huge psycho with a knife and a sniper rifle in the middle of nowhere. That would be presumptuous. But these characters act the way I would
imagine that a reasonably intelligent person would act in a spot like this. They do not separate unless there's a good reason to do so. They do not go alone into dark places without a good reason. They don't just stand there and scream when faced with danger. They think, they fight back and they do so intelligently and with admirable courage. The film subverts the tropes of this psycho-slasher horror subgenre in such a way as to make the maximum impact. The action goes in one direction that leads us to believe that things will work out just the way it has in a million other slasher flicks but then veers off in a direction that is completely deviant from formula.
Unfortunately, in keeping with this genre subversion and its aspirations toward realism, the film is also about as devoid of real hope as any 60 minutes of movie I have ever seen. From the very second that the shit hits the fan right on to the ending, the film approximates the experience of being stalked by a psychotic sadist in a vast expanse of unfamiliar nothingness as closely as I imagine any simulation can. It will not get any more realistic than this, short of you flying over to the outback and tempting fate (the film is loosely based on actual events, though the killer who inspired it has been caught). It is a harrowing 60 minutes, filled with flashes of false hope, moments of the deepest despair, scenes of absolutely stomach-churning violence all punctuated by the genuinely impressive attempts of the girls (the guy is kept under wraps for most of the second half, you'll see why) to escape. There is a tremendous sense of urgency from moment to moment as they meet some degree of success only to come across obstacles that are entirely realistic given the circumstances (missing car keys, empty guns, navigational trouble). There are very few gimmick plot points here. Nothing is convenient or coincidental. All this is compounded by the nature of the psychopath himself. This is no cartoonish supernatural villain with incredible abilities. He is a real human being that has clearly gone off the deep end, but recognizable as a person. He bleeds, he can be outsmarted, he makes mistakes. But he is also an experienced hunter and serial killer, possessed of that infamous Australian outback physique and familiar with the terrain. As a result, just like real life, things don't always work out the way we (desperately, horribly, painfully) want them to work out. In a different world, the ingenuity and courage of the three kids may have led them to escape but in this one - and make no mistake,
Wolf Creek and its semi-documentary style is earthed firmly in the realm of realism - a guy like Mick the Friendly Outback Hick is bound to succeed at least partly. And no, that is not a spoiler!! This is a horror movie, you know that at least ONE of the three ostensible victims has to die!! And at the instances that the killer does succeed, the sheer shock of the event is devastating. There are real moments of 'why does this have to happen' despondency that makes you almost want to lash out at Greg McLean, the writer-director.
It's not
just a horror movie either. The best horror movies have a method behind their madness.
Alien/Aliens was not just about the most badass xenomorph in the known universe doing what it does best. It was about body horror at its most primal, our nastiest little nightmares.
Rosemary's Baby was about the claustrophobia of urban life (among other things). Nearly all the vampire movies ever made were really only about sex. I could go on but you don't really need me to spell it out. It's the same in
Wolf Creek and not only is the subtext present, its put forward in a perfectly unassuming way that will not interfere with your 'enjoyment' (haha)of the movie. It begins well before the psycho even comes onscreen as our citified tourists are refuelling at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. The hitherto tough-guy posturings of the surfer dude from Sydney are brought to an abrupt halt by the advent of the REAL tough guys - a trio of monolithic outbackers that openly harass the girls as their male escort watches helplessly. Power dynamics shift and lines are drawn as the age-old us vs them, rural vs urban conflict that hearkens back to
Deliverance and beyond is brought up. The subject of modern day suppression of primal instincts and the things people can do to each other has always fascinated directors (a film thats pops to mind is Spielberg's early shocker,
Duel, also about an urban 'soft' victim tapping long repressed instincts to face a psycho from a different social/geographical milieu). Subversion is the name of the game here as the very mechanics of the horror film are stripped down, exhibited like so many body parts then put back together in a way that the audience could never predict. The way McLean plays with the stereotypes of Australian maleness is particularly of note. He takes all these archetypal qualities and plays them off against each other in darkly ironic ways. The kid from Sydney could have been from anywhere, full of spunk (literally and metaphorically), testosterone and the need to smoke some weed and play a guitar badly to impress a pretty girl. You know. Australians are like anybody else. But then again, maybe some of them aren't. In a dark carnival mirror of this normality, in writing the villain, McLean embraces all the stereotypes and magnifies them into an uber-Australian that functions as a loud response to every Crocodile Dundee movie ever made and every episode of
Who Dares Wins ever filmed. I'm not doing the English major thing and pulling this out of my ass. There is an actual quote from Crocodile Dundee that marks one of the most chilling and shocking moments of the film. It takes Dundee's throwaway action movie one-liner and turns it into a terrifying summary of
Wolf Creek in less than ten words - "that's not a knife.
This is a knife".
This self-aware dissection of the slasher genre and the success with which it achieves its goals also has the inevitable result of making us wonder why we're watching them. I loved this film. I think its up there with the most perfectly engineered horror films ever made. But I certainly wouldnt recommend it to everyone. It's success as an actual horror movie makes the whole thing an ordeal to watch. Critical responses are split evenly down the middle in an interesting way. Roger Ebert said he wanted to vomit and cry at the same time. Other critics have called it 'excruciating' and questioned why anyone would want to put themselves through something this viscerally upsetting. Others have praised it as highly as I have. It is also worthy of attention that very few people actually call this a bad movie per se. Nearly everyone admits that it is a highly accomplished piece of filmmaking. Their condemnation of it, if they were panning it, was based mostly on the question of 'why is this necessary?'. As with so much else in the world of art, the answer to this question is subjective. Good art is evocative. It reaches into the audience and yanks out emotions that were always there but had remained hitherto dormant. In the case of (good) horror movies, it plunges its hands into your sternum like a character in a David Cronenberg flick and yanks out the bloody beating heart of your deepest fears, insecurities and pain. There are some (like me) that actively seek this out.
Wolf Creek made me feel vaguely ill but I do not regret having put myself through it. I enjoy the sensation of having my world torn down and my fears exposed in a frenetic mix of adrenaline and elevated pulse rates, without the dangers of having to experience real danger in order to do so. How is this any worse than wanting to feel the melty-warmness of a
Lost in Translation or the excitement of a
Die Hard? It is certainly not for everyone. In which case one should choose to stick with 'horror' movies that are actually a big joke from beginning to end, featuring characters like Freddy or Jason. Or they could choose the definitely quite scary films like
Ringu and its ilk, getting their fix of fear while being kept at a distance from it by the supernatural factor. But, cliche as it might seem, the most effective and discomfiting horror lies in films like
Wolf Creek and
Funny Games and
Irreversible. Those are the movies that involve real people doing real things to other real people, peeling back the skin of civilization to expose all the squishy red things underneath. These are the movies that disturb and scare me the most and I shall continue to seek them out whether or not Roger Ebert thinks I'm a pervert for doing so. There is certainly a masochistic element in doing so. These movies tap into a primal part of us all that we've evolved a cocoon around because we don't usually need to use it anymore. But they're there, brooding like little chestbursters inside us, and occasionally they need a little alone time with our heads. These movies are the facilitators of these exchanges. Some of us don't like to acknowledge the existence of the little chestbursters and that's fine. Stay away from movies like
Wolf Creek. But for those of us that do.....nuff said.
