THIS REVIEW IS BASED ON ACTUAL EVENTS.

First off, I gotta address a couple points. Number one, regarding the reputation of this movie. I think it’s getting a bad rap. One Seattle critic wrote about walking out instead of reviewing it. Another one (”shout out” to Andrew Wright as the kids would say) mentioned the other critic walking out and said he didn’t blame her (his review was “a recommendation, I guess”). Roger Ebert gave WOLF CREEK zero stars and pretty much condemned it as a failure for the human race. Even some of the horror fans who liked it are talking about it like it peeled off their skin and made them eat it and despite the unpleasantness of the whole ordeal they begrudgingly had to admit that it did a good job of forcing them to eat it.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find that it’s a little more of a fun slasher movie than people are saying. Yes it’s more brutal and more realistic than many. You take the killer seriously because he’s just a guy, not Jason. Not some supernatural mutated retard with a scary mask. And yes he’s a rapist. But the audience gets off easy on that count. He doesn’t molest a woman with a gun like in THE DEVIL’S REJECTS (3 stars –Roger Ebert) or force young girls to piss their pants like in LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (3 1/2 stars). I was expecting one of those unpleasant movies that makes you stare at humanity’s filthy ass and you feel kind of guilty and unhealthy for liking it, like a HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (3 1/2 stars). I was expecting to have to endure a bunch of horrible shit that I probaly didn’t want to see, but it’s really not that kind of movie. I haven’t seen IRREVERSIBLE (3 stars) but if it’s how they said it was, with a long rape scene to torture the audience, it’s not like this one. The violence is more sparing here, it’s just that the execution makes it hurt.

I’m not trying to call Ebert a hypocrite or nothing. I think he was right about all those movies. Maybe his tastes are changing and now he would be the guy who is offended by HENRY. It seems to me he’s punishing the movie for being well made. HIGH TENSION, for example, he hated that too but at least it got a star and he had fun joking around in the review, despite it having a higher body count, way more gore, a dead kid and even a homophobic subtext if you want to get political. This one, he acted like it ate his dog. He is punishing it for being realistic, for not having a silly twist ending, for having a genuinely scary villain. If the guy was dressed up as an evil clown or had supernatural powers or something, I bet it would’ve gotten that one star. (more…)

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