Wolf Creek

Starring: Cassandra Magrath, Kestie Morassi, Nathan Phillips
Director: Greg McLean

There are very few good horror flicks these days.
Even the big budget remakes like Dark Water and The Grudge invariably resort to cheap scare tactics like things suddenly popping up round the corner and the volume cranked up to ear-splitting levels.
And then you don’t want to watch it again cos you know all the gags.
Know this then: you will most likely only want to watch Wolf Creek once.
But not cos it was cheap.

Apparently based on true events (I know, but stay with me) the plot revolves around three backpackers who go on a road trip into the Aussie outback to visit Wolf Creek, a large meteor crater. Surprise, surprise, the hapless trio get stranded.

Thus begins a series of ass-fuckings like you wouldn’t believe. Like you wouldn’t wish on a group of loud-mouthed, obnoxious teens any more than you’d want to have been one of those poor sods had the Blair Witch Project actually been real.

No vagrants left for dead returning to exact revenge. No creatures hiding at the bottom of the lake who’ve been deprived of its diet of human food far too long. Just people. People who want to do bad things to you because they can.

Wolf Creek isn’t just violent. It’s vicious.
Director Greg McLean does wonders with his no-name cast, torturing them – and us – not with fear of the unknown, but the naked terror of certainty. This is a knife, it is sharp and cruel, and it is going to be in you.
He drags out every sadistic act and simple scenes become infinite moments of torture so by the time it happens, you’re pleading for mercy along with the characters.

But most of all, McLean is also unsympathetic. There are no mistakes, there is no stopping the onslaught that befalls the backpackers. Any relief is temporary, and any hope introduced is a cruel joke.
For this is the face of true evil:
When you meet a thing that doesn’t need to show you mercy, why would it stop?

And this gradually becomes the show’s downfall. The violence is so unforgiving, so unrelenting that you flinch too often, making the show physically draining. It’s hard-hitting stuff and you’re beaten into submission.

Eyes open or shut, you’re not likely to watch this again.
But you won’t forget that you did.

Paradise Now

Starring: Kais Nashef, Ali Suliman, Lubna Azabal
Director: Hany Abu-Assad

Post 9/11, almost every take on terrorism has fallen into two stereotypes: the extremists or the sympathisers. This is the first movie I’ve seen told from the viewpoint of the terrorists themselves.

Paradise Now tells the story of the last 48 hours of two young Palestinian men, childhood friends Saïd (Kais Nashef) and Khaled (Ali Suliman). Working dead-end jobs as auto mechanics and barely keeping above the poverty line, the two are informed by a point man for an unnamed Palestinian organization who informs them they have been chosen for a suicide mission to carry out a strike in Tel Aviv. This isn’t 24, so there’s no race to stop them or webs of deceit to unravel. No big setback befalls the two, merely a mix-up in timing and a period of separation when the two are no longer there to reassure each other they’re doing the right thing.

It’s this simple examination of motives – both personal and political – that is the movie’s greatest achievement. No real analysis or conclusion. Just a pause so you can ask yourself “Is this really worth it?”

Hollywood’s grasp on political subjects has always been shaky, first with the Irish, and post 9/11 with the fast and loose interpretation of (invariably) Middle Eastern conflicts. But there’s no posturing here. Saïd and Khaled aren’t religious zealots who’ve been indoctrinated since childhood (Khaled has to read his martyr’s message from a script which he reads in stutters to a video camera).

The film’s clever bit is actually Suha (Lubna Azabal) whose romantic interest in Saïd is a neat way for her to want to stop him going through with the mission. She digs him, so she doesn’t want him to blow himself up so you can buy the stuff she says more easily then if she were some moral idealist with a ‘love all, serve all’ ideology.

The three ultimately represent the full range of viewpoints:
Suha, that there are other alternatives to violence.
Khaled, that uncertainty is not always weakness.
And Saïd, that we all want to believe our lives have some kind of purpose, particularly when we’re called on to give it up.

It’s a simple story in the end.
It’s not that the characters suddenly find morality or remorse.
Merely that everyone wants to live.
It’s all fine and good for someone to die for what he believes in.
Until that someone is you.