Wolf Creek is the story of a trio of friends traveling through Australia who are captured and tortured by a lone stranger.

The movie was awesomely sick once it got going. But the set-up went on forever. The friends, Liz (Magrath), Kristy (Morassi) and Ben (Phillips) are shown just driving and goofing off and having a good time for at least 40 minutes. The film is only 95 minutes long. The set-up should have lasted no longer than 10 minutes, 15 tops. It’s a horror film and the gore should start as soon as possible.

Some set-up is necessary to get the audience to have sympathy for the characters and a portion of it does tie into the events that come to pass. But a lot of it could have been cut so that more actual cutting could be done.

SPOILER ALERT

I lost sympathy for the characters when they had a chance to kill their captor and left the job unfinished, as usual. He was down. Liz shot him but he was only stunned. There was ammo behind her. Granted, she may not have known how to load the gun. So smash his head in with it (it was a shotgun). Crush his spine with your foot. He had a big knife. Take it and slit his throat. Something! It’s him or you, damn it! Step up!

This would have ended the movie at about 65 minutes. But there could have been more torture up until that point and then Liz could have gotten Kristy and Ben and they all could go medieval on their captor's ass.

But as the story actually goes, it does leave you feeling quite disturbed, and not just at the 25-30 minutes that were wasted on the set-up. I think this is what the filmmaker was going for. So be it. I just didn’t care for it.

We’ve seen enough films where justice isn’t served and evil continues. Sure, the happy ending where the good guy wins is cliché, too. But it’s all in how you present it. And this just wasn’t original.

I liked it better before when it was called Wrong Turn. Actually that’s not true. This was a better film for its rawness and the plot was a bit less predictable. But there were many similarities: group of young friends, stranded without a car, pursued by someone who intends to do them great bodily harm; a trail of previous victims evidenced by the possession of their cars and personal belongings; etc…

The cinematography was raw with lots of angles that added to the discomfort of the story and lots of browns that added to its grit. But the set-up was far too long and the ending too abrupt to salvage the high points of the movie.

It is interesting to note that Quentin Tarantino has given high marks to this film along with pal Robert Rodriguez. Tarantino is also presenting another horror film, Hostel, coming out this Friday, January 6. This just means he put his name on it so people will say, "Ooh, Tarantino. Let's go." I was going to do something similar. I planned to changed my last name to Tino. Then people would go see the new Taryn Tino film, thinking it was him and before they knew any better, I'd already have their money (heh heh heh).

Hostel is written and directed by Eli Roth who brought us Cabin Fever. I love that flick. I expect to enjoy his sophomore endeavor as well.

I just hope Hostel is more impressive than Wolf Creek. I can’t imagine it won’t be.

Grade: C