Wolf Creek 2 (2013)

There’s not a lot that terrifies me more in the horror movie realm than two things; movies that are based on true events, and killers that are just plain ol’ crazy ass humans. No resurrected demons, no essence of evil, just a bunch of crazy. And that’s what we get in the latest installment from co-writer/director Greg McLean in Wolf Creek 2.

Wolf Creek 2 isn’t just a clone of the first film where we have 45 minutes of character development before meeting our sinister murderer Mick Taylor, played by John Jarratt. Although I can dig that sort of thing when it’s done well and isn’t boring, the second film of the series immediately kicks off with the madness. Taylor is insane, methodic, and just plain scary. He is perfectly played by Jarratt and the little nuances that he adds to the character give you chills. Going from smiling and jovial to straight-faced and enraged in a matter of an instant is easily pulled off by Jarratt. Taylor’s trademark laugh, something that Jarratt spent months perfecting, cannot be more effortlessly delivered. He has quickly become one of my favorite new movie serial killers.

As we’ve seen in the first film, there’s nothing Mick loves more than the thrill of the chase. I mean, he is a pig hunter, so it’s in his blood. But he loves chasing and killing foreigners more than pigs. The way the movie changes its focus from one victim to the other is absolutely seamless. You don’t see it coming and you realize after some time has passed that nothing paused, there was no scene change, and no segue. It just moves right though onto a new victim.

But is there as much gore as the first? Good God, yes! But wait, there’s more! Although there aren’t many parts of the movie that make me cringe or look away, the blood really flows and the flesh gapes and explodes. The special effects team did a fantastic job of making all of the props and gags for the extremely realistic kill scenes. What gets me is how they can constantly make things look so real and not have me thinking, “That’s not real, c’mon!”

That shit looked great!

Toby Oliver‘s cinematography was also well done, although I believe it would pretty hard to make scenic Australia look bad. Wide angle shots showing mountains in the distance of a vast desert give it a different spin on the dingy disgusting places most horror movies are filmed. Overhead shots of the Wolf Creek Crater make it look absolutely massive. And yes, it’s not something that’s just added into the movie as part of the story; it actually exists.

The biggest difference I could find with this installment versus the first one was that this could almost be considered a horror comedy. Well, maybe more like horror black comedy. Mick Taylor’s one liners never stop coming, and they’re all great. Every time he laughed, I laughed. And the things he said before each kill continued to keep the ol’ belly rolling. There’s also a couple of taboo kills and decapitations that might make some turn it off, but if you’re the right type of person, you will more likely find some humor in it.

The movie’s score ranges from your typical classical-sounding background music to our killer listening to Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces” while dismantling a fresh corpse. I don’t think it gets much better than that song for that scene. It definitely had me laughing.

So was there anything I didn’t like about it? The movie opens stating that 30,000 backpackers go missing every year in the Australian Outback, and 90% of them are found within a month. However it also says the movie is based on true events. After some research, I was able to find that the Wolf Creek series is rather “influenced” by true events rather than actually based on them. There have been similar killers in Australia, but nothing in the actual movie was true.

There is no living Mick Taylor, thankfully.

Wolf Creek 2 is a fun thrill ride full of gore and human-hunting excitement with a great lead villain, but after watching this movie, you probably will have absolutely no desire to go to Australia. And if you know anyone going there sometime soon, make sure you sit down with them and give Wolf Creek 2 a watch.

But that would probably be a total dick move.