Wolf Creek

I left work at 3:30 today so I could catch the 4:00pm session of Wolf Creek. The line was very short and I got my ticket and headed in. I gave my ticket to the guy so he could rip the end off. It's the same guy who is always there ripping tickets and I've often wondered about him because he is an older fellow, unlike most who work at these big cinemas, who are teenagers. I've wondered about him but I've never spoken to him and he has never spoken to me, except for the usual automatic exchange which goes like this:

Ticket ripper: Cinema 17 upstairs to your right here's your ticket don't lose it.
Me: Thanks. I won't.

Anyway, there he was today as usual and I gave him my ticket to rip. He looked at it and said Ah! Wolf Creek, that's Cinema 3 around to your left, that is if you can handle it. Pretty tough stuff, is it? I said. He said that lots of people have been walking out on it. Then he mentioned some actor friends of his who watched it and they even found it hard going. Actor friends? He admitted that he used to be an actor. He also told me about one of the projectionists, a girl, who looked through the peephole (or something) at the movie and it repulsed her so much she did not look again. I told him I thought I could handle it. Yes, he said, you look like you have broad shoulders. You should be all right. I thanked him and went in and bought a vanilla choc-top (last week when I bought a coffee one the cone was all soggy and almost collapsed).
When I got around and through to Cinema 3, the door was closed. That was unusual. The door is never closed like that. I was about to push the door open but looked down at my ticket stub instead. It said Wolf Creek Cinema 3 4:45-6:44pm. 4:45? What the hell? I went back to the guy and asked him if it was right, that the newspaper said 4:00. He said yep, it's right. 4:45.
Oh well. How about that? That never happened before. Oh well. I didn't throw a fit. I felt pretty calm about the whole thing, actually. Cool as a cucumber I went over to a table sat down ate the choc-top and read my book.
Forty-five minutes later I got up and went back to Cinema 3.

At last, the movie review! Here it is, after all!:
Yes the movie was called Wolf Creek and it was an Australian movie. I had heard nothing about this one, only that it was a horror movie, some kind of slasher movie, based on actual events.
There's a guy (Ben) and two girls (Liz and Kristy) travelling around Australia by car. The guy is Aussie, the two girls are English. When the movie begins they are at Broome in Western Australia, having fun at the beach. They go to a pub that night and have a wild time out in the beer garden, getting drunk and doing bombs into the pool. The next day they set off inland. On the way they tell jokes and sing songs on Ben's acoustic guitar, quite silly retarded songs. They are having a very fun time. Then they get to some tiny town called Emu Creek. Liz (or Kristy) walks into the pub where a group of filthy-looking men start cracking lewd jokes about her to each other. Then Kristy (or Liz) walks in and they make some unchivalrous remarks about her. Then Ben comes in and they take a crack at him too. One of these witty chaps gets up calls Ben over and says hey me and the fellas were thinking about having a gang bang, but we thought we had better get your permission. Big laughs around the table. Ben looks scared and uncomfortable but angry too and can you blame him? He is a young fellow, quite happy-go-lucky so it seems. But he turns back to the bar muttering go to hell you fuckhead. This makes the standing guy angry and he says what the hell did you say? Ben backs down and says oh I only said you have a nice smile. Pretty funny because the guy has a big hole where a couple of front teeth oughtta be.
Ben and Liz and Kristy get back out to the car safely but shaken, drive off then soon appear to forget about that unpleasantness. But we don't, do we? We know it's a bad sign and for sure worse things are in store for our young adventurers.
They get to an enormous crater (actually the Wolfe Creek Crater) that was made by a meteor. This was something on their list of things to see obviously, and they are pretty excited to be there. They jump out of the car and run up to the rim to check it out. It really is spectacular. When they come back to the car, they find that their watches have stopped, all at the same time. Pretty spooky. Then the damn car won't start, which is a drag, but they resign themselves to having to stay the night, in the car. But in the middle of the night they see some lights. After speculating that it may be a UFO (Ben had earlier told the girls about a UFO visit in the area) it turns out to be an old guy who offers to help. He's not so old actually, maybe in his late 50s, and he's kind of a big loud joking guy, a real Aussie outback character. Sure, he's all right. He's gonna help them out. He asks them where they are from, the girls say England, Ben says Sydney. Mick, the *rescuer* says Ha! Sydney! The poofter capital of Australia!
Anyway, Mick tows them back to his place so he can fix their car. They are driving for hours it seems and they get worried, but decide it will be OK, sure. She'll be right, mate. That's the Aussie way. They get to Mick's place, an old abandoned mining camp, and sit around a fire while Mick regales them all about his former career as a shooter. His job was to shoot kangaroos and wild boar. He goes into detail like how the pigs are trickier because you have to get in close for the kill, and have to watch out for the tusks. He describes how one of his dogs was decapitated by one of these wild boars. Liz and Kristy look like they are gonna throw up. To lighten things up a little, Ben says to Mick that it must be great to live and work out here in the outback, with the FREEDOM and all that jazz. Mick looks at him like he's insane (or a poofter). He gives him a long, very unsettling look. Woah. It's here that we realise that Mick is probably not a nice Crocodile Dundee type character. In fact he looks like he could be a MANIAC.
Well, then the three adventurers go to sleep. A bad idea. Liz (or Kristy, I can't remember which was which but it doesn't matter) wakes up in a shed, bound and gagged. She is terrified, naturally, but that's nothing yet. She finds a piece of glass and manages to free herself and jumps out the window. That's when she hears the screaming. She goes up to a window and looks in to see Kristy tied to a pole, bloody, screaming, with Mick pointing a rifle at her, taunting her and cracking jokes.
This is where it gets REALLY nasty. The rest of the movie is almost constant screaming and sadistic brutality. It's really quite nasty and sustained. Here we have an Australian version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And don't forgot it's based on actual events (the Peter Falconio case and the Ivan Milat backpacker murders). I can only think of a handful of movies that have achieved this level of pure nastiness: Tobe Hooper's aforementioned chainsaw extravaganza; the Austrian movie Funny Games; Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses. Oh yeah, and Gaspar Noe's Irreversible.
This one really got to the audience, I could tell. There were not even any nervous giggles. I don't know if anybody walked out because I was close to the front with only two people in front of me. One of them was a man who got up twice and went out and came back again for some reason. The other was a woman who kept going tsk tsk tsk tsk. It really got to her, you could tell. It was not a nice movie.