"Flying kangaroos!"
I was hoping I'd avoid a real stinker until later in the month. Alas. It's been years since I watched the first Wolf Creek and I don't remember much of anything about it, other than I didn't hate or love it; pretty standard mid-aughts torture fare, perhaps a bit more grisly and unforgiving than most. One thing's for sure - I'll definitely be remembering the sequel (for all the wrong reasons). Aggressively ugly, mean-spirited, tedious, and uninventive. One aspect I do remember from the first film is that it takes its sweet time to build up - you spend the first 40 minutes or so with the ostensible victims, get to know them, etc. WC2 seems hell-bent on inverting that formula, and places the focus squarely on our killer. The trouble is that John Jarrett isn't anywhere near as funny or intriguing as director Mclean seems to think - he's been turned into your standard slasher franchise killer, albeit without any sort of decent gimmick or motivation (beyond some half-cooked nativism that's a transparently limp-wristed attempt at cultural relevancy). He's spitting out one-liners like Krueger in Nightmare Part 6, only with half the wit. And to have wasted a high-speed game of dodgeball with kangaroos? Unconscionable. It tries to pull the rug out from under you towards the end of the first act, much like fellow Aussie horror film Razorback did, only without any of the verve or genuine shock that earlier film possessed. The cinematography can't hold a candle to that film, either. The barren outback is never threatening and seldom even breathtaking through Mclean's lens. Can't even watch the fucking thing as travel porn. Such an oddly constructed, haphazard dud. Who the fuck was even asking for this sequel 8 years after the fact?
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