Home Entertainment You should be watching: WOLF CREEK

You should be watching: WOLF CREEK

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Looks like I’m going to be frequenting this spot, folks! Hold on to your tinfoil hats, as I prepare to bring you tales of wonder and the macabre, revenge and redemption, and more often than not, buckets of ketchup.

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The first time I ever heard mention of Wolf Creek was in 2005, while attending the movies with friends. I knew nothing about the film and as the first few minutes started to roll, it became fairly obvious that whomever selected Wolf Creek as our entertainment for the night clearly did not know what they were getting us into either. For the next hour and a half we were subjected to the mercy of Australia’s evil Crocodile Dundee, Mick Taylor, played with an almost too convincing glee by John Jarrett. The Crocodile Dundee metaphor begins and ends with one thing, however: A really big knife. We get to see said knife in action often, as Mick exacts horrors on stranded motorists in the no man’s land of the Australian Outback, centred around a crater known as Wolf Creek.

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And when I heard that they were making a Wolf Creek TV series, I welcomed the idea. I had just seen Ash vs. The Evil Dead, loved it, and couldn’t wait to see another franchise get the serial treatment. And it was worth the wait, as I loved the Wolf Creek series, but for a very unexpected reason. The reason, you may ask? It is pretty damn good.

The first and most important thing to know about the Wolf Creek series though is that it is not an horror, which is quite the deviation from the ultra-violent slasher that was the original Wolf Creek film (I admit to not having seen any of the original film’s sequels, but it matters little in the context of the series). Instead what we have here is a taut revenge thriller, constantly poised on a knife’s edge of suspense.

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The series follows American tourist Eve Thorogood, played to perfection by Australian actress Lucy Fry, as she survives a brutal attack on her family by Mick as they rest overnight at a billabong. Her family is unfortunately not as lucky, which leads our heroine Eve on a lonely and terrifying path of revenge as she tries to find the man that killed everyone she loves. Finding Mick in the Outback proves to be an extremely difficult task. How do you find a ghost? A question she definitely tries to answer, while also having to deal with police and a gang of redneck bikers on her tail. Even more importantly… what will she do once she finds Mick, on turf that has been his hunting ground for decades?

Only six episodes long, Wolf Creek is worthy of a proper binge. Lucy Fry had me utterly convinced that she was American, and manages to carry entire episodes with very little dialogue. As I previously mentioned, her journey is a lonely one and the people she encounters are as unpredictable as the wilderness itself. Let me just say it outright – she was awesome. Drawing on her inner Ellen Ripley or Sarah Connor, she exudes inner strengh in an utterly convincing way, and I would love to see her carry on being a badass.

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The production value of each episode is also top notch. The Australian Outback is brought to life in beautifully shot scenes, with my only criticism being that it tends to draw from Breaking Bad‘s filmography formula a little too much.

Wolf Creek is a visually appealing and captivating revenge tale, and definitely worth a watch. As a South African, the most distracting thing I found was that the suburban scenes felt strangely familiar, drawing away from immersion a little bit, but it won’t be something other international audiences will notice.

Last Updated: August 2, 2016

One Comment

  1. RinceThis

    August 2, 2016 at 15:39

    Cool. Will give it a shot.

    Reply

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