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FEAR DINKUM!Australian writer and director Greg Mclean has brought us one of the year's finest horror movies in Wolf Creek. Slasherama catches up with him...
Spoiler note: This interview features no major spoilers. But if you don't want to know whether the killer(s) are aliens, one man, several men, Chinese women or raging lava-beasts, you'd best avoid it until you've seen the film.Hello Sir! Along with The Devil's Rejects, your film takes the honour of haunting me the most this year. Did you set out to disturb? Greg Mclean: "We definitely wanted to give films like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre a run for their money. A lot of time, really good horror does take you to the line, then jump over the edge with wild abandon into things you can't possibly imagine. I was consciously trying to walk to the edge of that taboo line. If this stuff goes on every day, what would it be like to watch it? It's obviously deeply unsettling, uncomfortable and disturbing, and that's cool!" The 'head on a stick' sequence will stay with me forever. Was it a difficult scene to shoot? Greg: "Kinda. I don't know what it's like for other people making horror films, but the darker the subject the lighter you have to keep the atmosphere. That was true for Wolf Creek, except for that scene and another scene in which a girl is being menaced by the bad guy. You have to pay real respect and attention to what you're asking people to do for you. An incredible level of focus and inner concentration goes into those actors doing their work, so you have to make sure that they've got everything they need, to get where they've got to go." Did anybody get a bit emotional about it all, on set? Greg: "Oh, definitely. There were always tears in those scenes. It's quite amazing to watch someone simulate emotion and it's incredibly hard to do, so there were a lot of times when people were emotional. It's an incredibly tragic subject matter as well. You're dealing with the lowest points of the human character, to a degree." 
The film is book-ended with captions which present it as a true story and seems loosely based on various outback murders. Do you run the risk of being seen as tasteless?Greg: "That's definitely a fair enough criticism. That's one of the reasons why we kept it pretty broad: it's obviously not a documentary of any of the two or three true cases that have happened in Australia. It's similar that there's a couple of British tourists in it, as well as a few other tenuous links like the bad guy being Australian. We obviously had no right to tell any kind of true story: the thinking didn't go much further beyond, 'Isn't some people getting in trouble in the outback a great setting for a horror film?'." So the story's an amalgamation of various true-life cases? Greg: "Well, the concept of the movie happened about 10 years ago. I thought it'd be great to do a horror movie set in the outback with a lone bushman character. The true stories actually came along after the fact. I really wanted the film to have that very basic story-telling quality that urban legends have. It's the kind of thing that you sit around the campfire and tell people, in order to scare them." And you've used the Texas Chain Saw-style captions to give the film the ring of truth? Greg: "Yeah. It's a very, very time-honoured device. The more believable and truthful you believe a film is as an audience, the more you can participate in the horror." The film features some great humour about the stereotypical portrayal of Australians, which the headline of this feature entirely fails to avoid! You're basically digging at the perceptions of Brits, aren't you? Greg: "Oh definitely. A big conscious part of it was to put a big pin through that stereotype of the happy, friendly Aussie guy. There is very much that kind of deep parochial resentment that this bush character has, when people start making fun of him. It ignites this incredible kind of rage." Does the Crocodile Dundee gag get a laugh out of Oz audiences in your experience, or are they too traumatised by what's going on? Greg: "People love that line! I think Australians are as sick of the whole stereotype as anyone else, to a degree. Despite the movie being such an aggressive cinematic experience, it's been fun to put a huge cliche up on screen, then tear it right down." Wolf Creek is literally a movie of two halves. You can feel the dread build when the screen goes black, halfway through. Greg: "Yeah, it's literally like a curtain closing. It's just an old theatre device. Structurally, the movie is a two-act script, which is weird. You have a 35-minute set-up, then an extended climax. I spent a lot of time playing around with structure and how predictable most structures are." 
What are Miramax's intentions for Wolf Creek?Greg: "I know they're gonna do a huge launch across North America in November. They've been planning amazing trailers and poster designs. They're going to try and knock it out of the park, because they love the film so much. It's one of the key releases of the new Weinstein company. So we'll see how it goes." Strangely, there haven't been many Aussie horror films full-stop... Greg: "No, and that's partly to do with the fact that we're government-funded. A horror film, by definition, should be semi counter-cultural, content-wise. So to have a government making a film which criticises or destroys the very culture they're building, just isn't going to happen." Would you make a Wolf Creek sequel, if this one hits big? Greg: "I actually got offered to make one already. The film is not the kind of movie you can instantly go and do again - there were so many elements which had to be right to make it. I guarantee you that if a sequel was made quickly it'd be a piece of shit. If there is gonna be one, it'll come in a couple of years time..." I'd certainly like to know more about the killer... Greg: "Yeah, he's a great character. I had the idea of making a comic book series, based on him. I came up with some potential storylines - one of which would be a great film concept. So we'll see." Three-quarters of the way through Wolf Creek, certain characters do some rather stupid things, like pick up a camcorder. How do you plead? Greg: "Guilty! Absolutely. Without giving too much away, there's no reason in the world why she'd do that. What the f**k is she doing? I watch it and I go, 'Mmmm... okay'. It's not perfect." Maybe not, but it's a fantastic movie overall. What are you doing next? Greg: "I'm doing another horror film, that I've been working on for a couple of years. I'm finalising the deal." Does it operate it in a different horror sub-genre, as opposed to Wolf Creek which is best described as a pseudo-slasher? Greg: "It's much more in the Jaws/Alien type of realm. It's similar to Wolf Creek in the sense that it's quite an old-fashioned kind of horror film. It should also be pretty darn scary. Hopefully we'll be shooting it this year." Wolf Creek will be released on two-disc DVD and UMD in the UK on January 16, 2006. It receives a wide US theatrical release on January 6, 2006. [Wolf Creek review] [Features Menu] [Back To Top] [Home] © Copyright Slasherama 2002-present |