Horror In The Outback

Australian Gothic : Movies That Actually Make Money


Huge crocodiles, like this one we photographed last year on the East Alligator River, will star in the new movie, Rogue, from Wolf Creek director Greg McClean.

Some Australians were sickened by the backpacker serial killer flick Wolf Creek, others thought it was kind of funny, and pretty silly. American friends were shocked by the violence and the intense sense of isolation the movie conjured up, but they also said it made them want to visit the outback and see the place for themselves.

They're not alone.

When Wolf Creek was first released a few years back, there was genuine horror amongst tourism industry executives, fearful that the movie would put off tourists and backpackers from visiting Australia, and visiting the arid, remote stretches of the Australian outback in particular.

But the stream of tourists and backpackers hiring dodgy old vans, or renting air-conditioned homes on wheels for a few weeks of hitting the desert highways has actually increased in the past two years.

As terrifying (or funny) as Wolf Creek could get, it also showcased a hauntingly beautiful series of landscapes, barren, empty but dazzling. Why wouldn't tourists want to come and see such places for themselves?

The Australian tourism industry learned its lesson well.

When Wolf Creek director's Greg McClean's follow-up, Rogue, which pits a bundle of tourists caught on a sand island at night against huge and hungry crocodiles churning through the rising waters, hits cinemas across the world in the next few months, there are plans to launch publicity campaigns about the NT, where the movie is set, and Kathryn Gorge in particular, and those dead-eyed, cold-blooded dinosaurs will be the star attraction.

Thanks to the success of Wolf Creek, and the zombie flick Undead, Australian movie-makers are now turning out a string of horror movies and they are being snapped up by international distributors.

Australian horror movies are the rarest of Oz flicks - many of them actually make money and are seen by millions around the world.

From the Sydney Morning Herald :

Joel Anderson, the writer and director of the supernatural mystery Lake Mungo, puts it starkly: "One of the main reasons that Lake Mungo exists is because of Wolf Creek. That film had a big profile, and it made money, and film always follows money."

"We call what we do 'Australian Gothic'," says Everett DeRoche, a key figure in Australian horror who wrote the scripts for classics such as Patrick (1978), The Long Weekend (1978) and Razorback (1984). The term was coined to describe Razorback, and anyone who has seen this smoky, heavily backlit tale of a giant pig terrorising the outback will understand why. "Australia doesn't have that iconic 'haunted house' that we are familiar with from American movies. But it does have the outback, and people's fear of that, that agoraphobia."

A DeRoche script, Storm Warning, has recently been filmed by the director Jamie Blanks, who is also set to direct a remake of The Long Weekend. The original Long Weekend is a fascinating film, with a central idea of humans disrespecting the environment and suffering the consequences feeling years ahead of its time. Interestingly, DeRoche says the notion of the outback as a spooky place is more prevalent abroad than in Australia, perhaps explaining why his films have proved more popular in the US and Europe than here.

IndiVision, an Australian Film Commission scheme now in its third year, has given a boost to local film production, including the horror genre. The director of the commission's IndiVision Project Lab, Megan Simpson Huberman, explains the thinking: "Amongst a diverse national film slate, we wanted to make more films at a lower budget. This will allow more filmmakers to practise their craft."

One film helped by IndiVision is Black Water, from the first-time writer-directors Andrew Traucki and David Nerlich. Set in crocodile-infested mangrove swamps in northern Australia, it was actually filmed in Gungah Bay on the Georges River.

"There's nothing worse than making a film and no one goes to see it - which has been the case with many recent Australian films," says Black Water's producer, Michael Robertson. The film has been sold to more than 30 countries, and has already recovered its production budget of $1.2 million. It's an effective shocker, featuring three city-dwellers battling for survival against a man-eating croc, and brilliantly taps into that fear of remote Australia.

Lake Mungo, from the writer-director Joel Anderson, has also benefited from the IndiVision scheme. It tells of the drowning death of a 16-year-old girl, how the family copes with the tragedy, and the investigation into subsequent sightings of the girl. A line from the film - "Whenever someone dies, there's always a ghost story never far behind" - sums it up well.

Anderson did not set out to make a genre film, but has enjoyed the opportunities of working within genre. "Australia has often made self-consciously Australian films, which can be inhibiting. Horror movies, though, are really B-movies. If we can inherit the vitality associated with B-movies, then questions of Australian-ness are absorbed into the story. The question takes care of itself."

More Australian horror movies? Yes, please. Anything but another $6 million movie about the grim struggle of junkies in decaying urbania.

We want to feel The Fear. Not fear The Boredom.


The Orstrahyun : Killer Crocodile Flicks Set To Terrify

Watch The Trailer For Rogue Here

Rogue And Black Water - Australian Monster Movies Make A Welcome Return

Killer Crocodile Movies Set To Terrify

All photos by Darryl Mason, Northern Territory, August 2006


The banks of the East Alligator river, in the Northern Territory, were feet thick with a quicksand-like mud when we visited the area last year. The mud is a trap in itself. Once you step into it, it could suck you into your knees and then h0ld you in place until this 10 foot long monster is ready for a feed. Never, ever, get out of the boat.


The director of Wolf Creek, Greg McLean, is set to scare ten kinds of hell out of tourists and backpackers all over again with his new film, Rogue.

But instead of a shockingly cruel serial killer roaming the outback picking up unwary touros, this time McLean deposits his human cast deep inside the ancient, unforgiving realm of Australian crocodile country.

It's been a long time between feasts for Australian horror movies fans wanting to dine out on a homegrown monster movie, but this year we're going to get at least two, and both deal with killer crocodiles hunting down humans.

The second crocodile thriller is called Black Water, and while Rogue is a $30 million top-cast studio effort, with more than $6 million of the budget devoted to special effects, Black Water barely cost $1 million, and its director promises he's followed the Stephen King edict : the less you show of the monster, the scarier it can be.


Even without his front legs (bitten off during fighting), this crocodile has thrived in a muddy river in the Northern Territory for decades.

As this excellent feature from 'The Australian' explains, Rogue and Black Water are polar opposites when it comes to budgets, special effects, locations and cast, but both promise plenty of chills when they hit cinema screens in the second half of 2007.

Black Water was filmed amongst the mangroves of Georges River, south of Sydney, while Rogue goes deep into crocodile territory in the Katherine Gorge, in the Northern Territory.

The Wolf Creek director said Rogue will be "an old-fashioned horror film". He likens his film to classics like Jaws and Alien, which were monster movies, but were more focused on the characters thrust into the monster's path than just scaring the audience with gore and shocks.

Rogue will show what happens to a boatload of tourists who wind up marooned on a river island as the tide rises and the crocodiles come for a feed.

Black Water, meanwhile, will see a bunch of mates on a fishing trip getting chased up a tree by crocodiles, where they are then stuck for most of the rest of the movie - except for those devoured by crocodiles, who can actually climb trees if they really want to get you.

Can't wait. Don't know about the swamps of the Georges River, but Katherine Gorge and Kakadu (where Rogue was also reportedly filmed) are stunningly beautiful, but also stunningly harsh environments where humans are the least likely to survive when it comes to squaring off against the crocodiles.

If two Australian crocodile horror-thrillers can do some decent box office business, we might get to see more Australian horror movies filling Australian screens. It will be about time.

Young Australians don't spend tens of millions of dollars a year at the cinema watching the endless slew of terribly shit American horror movies because they like crap. They like horror movies. If Australian producers and directors don't make them, they'll watch dirge like Hostel and The Hitcher and Texas Chainsaw Massacre remakes for want of a thrill and a scare.

Maybe we'll see a new genre of Australian horror movies based around our most fearsome and deadly wildlife.

I look forward to a horror movie about Japanese tourists who are accidentally locked inside a koala park and then have to survive the night while being hunted by eucalyptus-crazed koalas in full drop-bear fury.

For wannabe horror movie makers, some good advice from Wolf Creek/Rogue director McLean in The Australian story, (excerpts) :

"There has to be an idea of genius in there to warrant people seeing a low-budget film instead of a $30 million or $40million movie," says Mclean, who made Wolf Creek for $1.4 million and was rewarded when the Weinsteins spent $7.5million on distribution rights for several countries.

"We had a one-in-a-million shot of being noticed. It had to be so much better structured, acted, and more realistic than all the other horror films out there," he says. "It was designed to reverse audience expectations and generate a feeling of freshness to make them think they had not seen anything like this before.

"Low-budget filmmaking should be a place where people experiment and break rules, not make low-budget versions of boring movies ... It has to be something people have never seen before or something executed so brilliantly and with such precision that it's worth seeing."

Seconds before he slammed his huge head into the tinnie, this six foot long crocodile near Katherine Gorge appeared to be smiling at us.