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Wolf Creek, rurality and the Australian gothic

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 24; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10304310903576358

1469-3666

John Scott, Dean Biron,

Geographies of human-animal interactions

Abstract As with Crocodile Dundee before it, the recent Australian film Wolf Creek promotes a specific and arguably urban-centric understanding of rural Australia. However, whilst the former film is couched in mythologized notions of the rural idyll, Wolf Creek is based firmly around the concept of rural horror. Wolf Creek is both a horror movie and a road movie, one which relies heavily upon landscape in order to tell its story. Here we argue that the film continues a tradition in the New Australian Cinema of depicting the outback and its inhabitants as something the country's mostly coastal population do not understand. Wolf Creek skilfully plays on popular conceptions of inland Australia as empty and harsh. But more than this, the film brings to the fore tensions in the rural idyll associated with the ownership and use of rural space. As an object of urban consumption, rural space may appear passive and familiar, but in the context of rural horror iconic aspects of the Australian landscape become a source of fear – a space of abjection. Acknowledgement The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the Australian Research Council (Discovery Grant DP0878476). Notes 1. With its low-budget, vérité aspects of cinematography and narrative, and its allusions to the supernatural, Wolf Creek can also be compared to the US film The Blair Witch Project (Myrick and Sánchez, 1999), while in an Australian context Martin Murphy's Lost Things (2003), set on a deserted beach bereft of umbrellas and lifesavers, has similarities too in its mystical aspects and depiction of a group of youths at the mercy of an older bushman-type who is closer to nature. 2. A key point which differentiates this type of narrative from a film such as Henri-Georges Clouzot's Le Salaire de la Peur [The Wages of Fear] (1953), in which the terrain itself is presented as both destructive and malevolent. 3. The 'strangeness' of the outback is, as John Stratton has pointed out, manifested in the 'dryness' of the outback, which is in stark contrast to our moist, green coastal fringe. 'In Australian mythography the drier the outback the more lawless and threatening it is. Crocodile Dundee's outback has plenty of water – even if that water does contain crocodiles. However, in Wolf Creek the dryness of the outback has a pathological quality' (Stratton Citation2007, 191). 4. There are examples of a European gothic sensibility being transported to an Australian setting, for example Patrick (Franklin, 1978) and Thirst (Hardy, 1979), but arguably these films bring little that is essentially Australian to their horror narratives – essentially, they could have been made anywhere. The popularity of Wolf Creek seems evidence of its capacity to speak 'to something in Australian's present-day world view' (Stratton Citation2007, 190). 5. In this context, mention must be made of Colin Eggleston's Long Weekend (1978), an Australian horror film in which nature itself is presented as fighting back against disrespectful urban intruders. 6. A notable exception being John Duigan's outstanding The Year My Voice Broke (1987).