Book of the Month at the Northern Territory Library
May 2012
Wolf Creek / Sonya Hartnett
Wolf Creek is an Australian horror film released in 2005 and directed by Greg McLean. The movie generated a great deal of controversy in the media due to its confronting subject matter, shocking depiction of violence and the close resemblance of its plot to the real life cases of Ivan Milat and Bradley John Murdoch. In fact the release of the film in the Northern Territory was delayed so that it did not interfere with Murdoch’s trial.
Sonya Hartnett is a novelist, not a film critic, and as such makes an interesting choice of writer for this latest edition in the Australian Screen Classics series (which also includes volumes devoted to films such as Mad Max, Wake in Fright and The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith). Hartnett offers an (almost literally) blow-by-blow account of the film. Interspersed with her prose are summaries of the real life murder cases that inspired the film. Hartnett analyses the plot, the characters and the way in which the movie both conforms to and subverts horror movie stereotypes. She is aware of the disreputable nature of the horror film; at one point she describes Wolf Creek as “…a better film than it presents as being”.
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