Wolf Creek (2005)

  Yet another horror movie from Christy.  This one she actually owns.  She says she has no problem watching serial killers, she just can't watch any paranormal horror, which is about as far from sense as you can get.

Kristy (Kestie Morassi) and Liz (Cassandra Magrath) are British tourists on a backpacking holiday in Australia.  They travel with their friend Ben (Nathan Phillips) to Wolf Creek Crater, a meteor impact site.  After a nice hike, the trio return to find their car won't start.  Faced with the prospect of a long walk through a country where everything wants to kill them, they are overcome with relief to be rescued by a random outback hillbilly (John Jarratt).  Too bad none of them have ever seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Deliverance.  It's serial killing time!

This isn't a terrible slasher film despite the low budget.  The tone of the film stays grounded and I appreciated the early teases that it might be an alien abduction.  The back of the box synopsis ruled that out but I thought the effort was good.  It strays slightly off-course by making the villain too much of a caricature and by only having three main victims. 

It claims to be based on true events:  the assault of a British tourist and his girlfriend by one guy in 2001 and also the string of Backpacker Murders from the 90's.  Either one of those stories would have been a decent tale to tell and I think that by trying to combine the sensational aspects from both the movie does them a disservice.