I'm trying to keep up with the double features, both because they give me a nice buffer and because I have a bunch of ideas for them. Last night's theme:
The Australian Outback
Wolf Creek
Summary - A trio of tourists (two young British women and an Australian guy) venture out into the outback to view a well-known hiking trail around the site of an old meteorite crater. When they go to leave, they discover that their car won't start. As they prepare to spend the night, a rugged outdoorsy type named Mick pulls up in his truck and offers to assist them. Ultimately, they agree to have him give them a tow back to his place, where he'll fix their car and have them on their way.
Of course, that's not how things actually go.
Thoughts - This one has been out long enough that you all probably know the drill. It came out amidst a wave of films like
Hostel and right in the middle of the New French Extremity "movement" and so tends to be grouped with them. Ebert, for his part, despised the film, dismissing it as little more than sadistic torture porn.
I...don't really agree, or at least, if it IS "torture porn", then so is
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There's certainly violence in the film, but there's less of it than you might expect given the film's reputation. What violence there is tends to be quick, merciless, and decisive. What the film DOESN'T have is long, lovingly-shot sequences of people slicing tendons, gouging eyeballs, and cutting off limbs. Also, the actual build-up to the violence is surprisingly long, giving us a lot of time to just sit with the characters before things go terribly wrong. The long drive in the pitch-black outback is particularly haunting - there's a feeling of transition, crossing over, like the characters are descending into Hell.
It is, however, a nasty film. The antagonist, Mick, is about as nasty a piece of work as you'll find in horror films. He's a vicious, misogynistic monster who will kill with a smile. What he isn't, however, is invincible or infallible. He's tremendously dangerous, yes, but he's not some sort of unstoppable force of nature like Michael Myers or a "three steps ahead" mastermind. With MAYBE one exception, all of his actions and triumphs in the film make sense.
Where the film succeeds is that I actually wanted the characters to get away and get the best of him, even though I knew how unlikely that was. The central trio isn't tremendously deep, but they're sympathetic enough (and the torments visited upon them are unfair enough) that the entire experience felt, as Mark Kermode described it, masochistic rather than sadistic.
It's not a FUN film - it's basically one big vacation nightmare. But I don't think it's quite as devoid of value as Ebert and some other reviewers indicated.
(Note: I was going to do
Primal as my second film, but I honestly couldn't pay attention to it after the first 10 or 15 minutes. So instead I turned to...)
Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead
Summary - There's a zombie outbreak! It seems to affect most of the population while leaving certain individuals mysteriously unaffected. However, a bite is still a guaranteed one-way trip to Z-town. A mechanic and bereaved father, Barry, runs into the slightly goofy Benny, and the two form an unlikely duo. They meet up with Frank, the owner of a garage, and together they discover that A: all traditional fuels are now useless, and B: the breath of the zombies is highly flammable. They rig up an armored car and set out in search of Barry's sister, who (unbeknownst to them) is in custody and at the mercy of a government scientist.
Thoughts - This is kind of a goofy movie. It's one part
Mad Max, one part
Dead Alive, and maybe a dash of
Gyo thrown into the mix. It's very much a horror-comedy, and the violence fluctuates in tone between action movie and slapstick. In terms of zombies, there's not much you haven't seen before - sometimes they're fast, sometimes they're slow, and their heads explode when you shoot them. It's competently done, though, and legitimately at least kind of funny in parts. Benny is a weirdly likable character, even if most of the others are pretty one-note. The ending is also a little bit flat. Still, it's not bad - not
Shaun of the Dead level, but still a cut above a lot of films trying to get their piece of the zombie trend.
