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Movie Recommendation of the Week
17 years ago
Some wonderful artists well worth your time:
Wolf Creek
Ah, October. That wonderful time of year in movies when the horror genre reigns supreme. Today's recommendation is a little gem that came out a couple years ago, and doesn't seem to be getting near enough praise and notice.
Now, at first glance it's easy to dismiss this film. A group of twenty-somethings on a road trip, car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, kindly stranger stops to help, suddenly he turn evil and begins to torture and kill them, so on and so forth. "Yawn. Been there, done that." you might be tempted to say. And even watching the trailer, you might think nothing special of this film (it certainly isn't a trailer that screams originality). But you'd missing out on something amazing if you passed it by, since this film, despite going in a slightly by-the-numbers plot structure, does everything so well it's easily one of the best horror movies of the last few years.
For starters, in the first 35 minutes or so, there's nothing horror related beyond a creepy soundtrack. Nothing. No attempt at a jump scare, no background on the killer (House of Wax), no opening scene of some group of random people getting killed by the killers (Wrong Turn), none of that. Instead, the movie focuses on character development of the three main characters (two girls and a guy played to perfection by some unknowns). It shows them to be regular, likable people, and you really start to care for them. They're friends, they're heading out on a road trip to see the country (Australia, in this case), they like to party but not excessively, and they act like people actually act. In fact, for the first half hour, you wouldn't even know you were watching a horror movie, but instead some drama about a roadtrip between three friends (save for the scary soundtrack, and even that's no indication of horror; look at the music in There Will Be Blood).
I applaud the movie for doing this. Instead of standard horror movie characters, where there's one or two who are obviously the leader and will live and a bunch of cannon fodder, there is instead three people, each of them who you want to survive and each of whom very well could make it. And a feeling of dread hangs over the whole thing (since you still know this is a horror movie, and you know something bad is going to happen to them) draws you in further, and it really sets a good atmosphere.
Once The Turn gets going, the killer is introduced and people start to get hurt. The killer here, a straight-up Aussie by the name of Mick Taylor (played wonderfully by an Australian sitcom star in one of the best performances of 2005), a charismatic hunter who kidnaps stranded motorists, drags them into his camp in the middle of nowhere, and tortures and kills them. It isn't so much the methods he uses (simple and brutal, nothing overly-fancy or inventive. Which I'm all for, it's nice to see something so straight-forward, so blunt), but his manner when he does it. So eager and pleased to be there, he acts like a nice guy you'd like to hang out with at a bar, if he wasn't shoving a large knife into someone so often. Plus, the way he's portrayed is not as some evil superhuman, some other-worldly being who is impervious to harm. He's just some guy, a human who can be hurt, and that, I feel, makes him a lot scarier since it makes him seem so much more real.
The gore that results from his deeds is dirty, but not excessive. It never strays into torture-porn, gore-for-gores-sake, it all stays simple and effective. It looks painful to the extreme, the set pieces (with other corpses and bones) look great, and all go towards creating a realistic camp from which this maniac operates.
The cinematography in this movie is also something to behold. It's all shot in what could be described as 'high-definition-grain', where everything looks clear but it still has a gritty feel to it. Shots of the Australian outback start out beautiful and then descend into something haunting; they very clearly portray the vast, empty area that the characters are trapped in. There's no help for many miles, there's nothing that can save them. They are completely isolated in the middle of nowhere. The silhouetted shots are also quite freaky, seeing the black outline of the killer with his gun (and hat) is something that can chill you to the bone.
So, overall, what could otherwise be a simple backwoods horror tale (watched and forgotten just as quickly) turns into one of the best examples of this particular sub-genre of horror since the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre. No jump-scares, no crazy and outlandish villains, no cannon fodder protagonists; just an effective and creepy horror movie that delivers where it should and then some. It's definitely worth seeing, and I insist that you give it a shot if you've yet to do so.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWKnmnK0M80
Ah, October. That wonderful time of year in movies when the horror genre reigns supreme. Today's recommendation is a little gem that came out a couple years ago, and doesn't seem to be getting near enough praise and notice.
Now, at first glance it's easy to dismiss this film. A group of twenty-somethings on a road trip, car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, kindly stranger stops to help, suddenly he turn evil and begins to torture and kill them, so on and so forth. "Yawn. Been there, done that." you might be tempted to say. And even watching the trailer, you might think nothing special of this film (it certainly isn't a trailer that screams originality). But you'd missing out on something amazing if you passed it by, since this film, despite going in a slightly by-the-numbers plot structure, does everything so well it's easily one of the best horror movies of the last few years.
For starters, in the first 35 minutes or so, there's nothing horror related beyond a creepy soundtrack. Nothing. No attempt at a jump scare, no background on the killer (House of Wax), no opening scene of some group of random people getting killed by the killers (Wrong Turn), none of that. Instead, the movie focuses on character development of the three main characters (two girls and a guy played to perfection by some unknowns). It shows them to be regular, likable people, and you really start to care for them. They're friends, they're heading out on a road trip to see the country (Australia, in this case), they like to party but not excessively, and they act like people actually act. In fact, for the first half hour, you wouldn't even know you were watching a horror movie, but instead some drama about a roadtrip between three friends (save for the scary soundtrack, and even that's no indication of horror; look at the music in There Will Be Blood).
I applaud the movie for doing this. Instead of standard horror movie characters, where there's one or two who are obviously the leader and will live and a bunch of cannon fodder, there is instead three people, each of them who you want to survive and each of whom very well could make it. And a feeling of dread hangs over the whole thing (since you still know this is a horror movie, and you know something bad is going to happen to them) draws you in further, and it really sets a good atmosphere.
Once The Turn gets going, the killer is introduced and people start to get hurt. The killer here, a straight-up Aussie by the name of Mick Taylor (played wonderfully by an Australian sitcom star in one of the best performances of 2005), a charismatic hunter who kidnaps stranded motorists, drags them into his camp in the middle of nowhere, and tortures and kills them. It isn't so much the methods he uses (simple and brutal, nothing overly-fancy or inventive. Which I'm all for, it's nice to see something so straight-forward, so blunt), but his manner when he does it. So eager and pleased to be there, he acts like a nice guy you'd like to hang out with at a bar, if he wasn't shoving a large knife into someone so often. Plus, the way he's portrayed is not as some evil superhuman, some other-worldly being who is impervious to harm. He's just some guy, a human who can be hurt, and that, I feel, makes him a lot scarier since it makes him seem so much more real.
The gore that results from his deeds is dirty, but not excessive. It never strays into torture-porn, gore-for-gores-sake, it all stays simple and effective. It looks painful to the extreme, the set pieces (with other corpses and bones) look great, and all go towards creating a realistic camp from which this maniac operates.
The cinematography in this movie is also something to behold. It's all shot in what could be described as 'high-definition-grain', where everything looks clear but it still has a gritty feel to it. Shots of the Australian outback start out beautiful and then descend into something haunting; they very clearly portray the vast, empty area that the characters are trapped in. There's no help for many miles, there's nothing that can save them. They are completely isolated in the middle of nowhere. The silhouetted shots are also quite freaky, seeing the black outline of the killer with his gun (and hat) is something that can chill you to the bone.
So, overall, what could otherwise be a simple backwoods horror tale (watched and forgotten just as quickly) turns into one of the best examples of this particular sub-genre of horror since the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre. No jump-scares, no crazy and outlandish villains, no cannon fodder protagonists; just an effective and creepy horror movie that delivers where it should and then some. It's definitely worth seeing, and I insist that you give it a shot if you've yet to do so.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWKnmnK0M80
Just wanted to let ya know that.
-Simply_Ghastly