Wolf Creek: Legacy aims to revive the Australian slasher series.
Films like Wake in Fright and Razorback serve as quintessential examples of the Australian perspective on terror, with another seminal entry into the lexicon of Australian horror being the 2005 movie Wolf Creek, which Deadline confirms is getting a third entry. The upcoming Wolf Creek: Legacy will mark the third entry in the series, as the debut movie earned the 2013 sequel Wolf Creek 2 and also inspired a TV series that ran for two seasons, and is set to feature the return of original star John Jarratt as the villainous Mick Taylor. Creator Greg Mclean will also be returning, though this time will serve as a producer.
The outlet describes the new film, “This time around it’s a family of American tourists who wander innocently into Taylor’s hunting grounds. When the parents sacrifice themselves to save their children, the kids find themselves alone, lost, and hunted in the vast Australian wilderness. Will this fresh prey — two wily, resourceful Zoomers — prove harder for the aging predator to consume?”
The original movie focused on a pair of British backpackers making their way through Australia who cross paths with the sadistic Mick, who terrorizes and tortures them. McLean’s original movie began as a relatively straightforward slasher, though when he began to incorporate true-life elements from famous Australian killer Ivan Milat, who murdered seven backpackers over the course of four years, McLean discovered a newfound interest in the project.
The success of films like Saw and Hostel in the 2000s saw a rise in more mean-spirited horror movies, with Wolf Creek being a prime example of an atmospheric and demented tale of terror. Wolf Creek was so grim that it marks one of a handful of movies to ever earn an F CinemaScore, a fact which McLean takes pride in.
“Obviously [Wolf Creek has] garnered a reputation over time as being seen as a pretty good horror film, but what happened was when Wolf Creek first came out, it was released on Christmas day in 2005 on 1,500 screens,” McLean shared with ComicBook back in 2017. “The Weinsteins thought it’d be clever to program it, because I think they’d had success with that concept to screen on Christmas day a couple years beforehand.”
He continued, “They thought, ‘Let’s put out this brutal, shocking horror film on Christmas day and see what happens. People came to this film, and the film is so upsetting, and so brutal, and so nihilistic that the expectation was audiences think they would go and see a fun horror film like Scream, and guess what? It wasn’t that at all. It was extremely disturbing, extremely nasty. A different kind of horror film than people and mainstream American cinema usually see. People haven’t seen a film like that in cinema since Texas Chain Saw Massacre in terms of how it pulls no punches whatsoever.”
Deadline teased that the new movie will serve as a reboot. Stay tuned for updates on Wolf Creek: Legacy.
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