WOLF CREEK: THE SERIES (2016)

Studio:       Pop TV
Director:    Tony Tilse, Greg McLean
Writer:       Peter Gawler, Felicity Packard
Producer:  Peter Gawler, Elisa Argenzio
Stars:     John Jarratt, Lucy Fry, Dustin Clare, Jessica Tovey, Eddie Baroo, Matt Levett, Deborah Mailman, Jake Ryan, Richard Cawthorne

Review Score:

---

Summary:

After her family is murdered, a 19-year-old tourist pursues serial killer Mick Taylor throughout the Australian Outback.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Episode 1: Billabong – Northern Territory, Australia – As part of an addiction intervention for their athlete daughter Eve, American tourists Roland and Ingrid Thorogood take Eve and her brother Ross on an RV trip in the Australian Outback. Serial killer Mick Taylor befriends the family when he rescues Ross from a crocodile. After dinner, Mick suddenly murders Roland, Ingrid, and Ross around their campfire. Mick shoots Eve as she flees into a nearby river, but she survives and later recovers in a hospital. Mick disposes of the bodies and burns the RV.

Darwin, Northern Territory – Police sergeant Sullivan Hill investigates Eve’s story and connects her case to a series of unsolved missing persons reports.

A chance sighting on the street leads Eve to follow a suspicious blue truck to a strip club, but the man she mistakes for Mick turns out to be someone else.

Eve steals a case file from Sullivan’s office. She then purchases a used van with marijuana unknowingly stashed inside and begins tracking down Mick on her own.

Mick murders a traveler stranded alongside a desolate road.

Episode 2: Kutyukutyu – Eve takes on a stray dog as a companion. Truck driver Ruth prevents a man named Kevin from accosting Eve at a remote gas station.

Kutyukutyu, Western Australia – Eve follows a lead on Mick from a photo in the case file. Distracted, Eve rear-ends a police car. Eve is taken to jail when an officer searches her van and finds the marijuana, but Eve escapes through a high window in her cell.

Eve finds Sullivan at a nearby motel. The local officer comes looking for Eve, forcing her to flee once again. Eve steals cash and a gun from a fellow prisoner named Kane after tracking him to his house from jail. Kane and his brother Ginger pursue Eve, but are forced to turn away by a man with a gun when Eve hides in a junkyard.

Mick prepares to capture two women stranded near Wolf Creek Crater, but four men interrupt. The next day, Mick locates the men and dumps their vehicle into the water.

2 Dogs Roadhouse, WA/NT Border – Kane and Ginger ask if anyone has seen a woman fitting Eve’s description. Mick realizes that Eve is still alive and is looking for him.

Eve recovers her dog and gets back on the road in another van.

Episode 3: Salt Lake – Salt Lake Campsite, South Australia – May 2009 – Mick murders two campers.

Kevin from the gas station finds Eve and attacks her inside her van. Eve shoots Kevin in his leg and leaves him on the road. Mick picks him up later, ultimately killing Kevin and leaving his strung-up body for Sullivan and the police to find.

Eve stops at the Face of the Madonna Roadhouse and meets café owner Bernadette, who mistakes Eve for being Irish. Eve returns to the road and becomes stranded when she loses a tire. Mick also stops at the café and Eve sees his truck drive by.

Kane and Ginger split up to continue searching for Eve. Kane comes to the café and bribes Bernadette for information on Eve.

A correctional facility van overturns when the driver has a seizure. A prisoner named Johnny escapes and finds Eve. Eve helps Johnny remove his handcuffs and Johnny fixes her tire before they go their separate ways.

Kane finds Eve and momentarily captures her. However, Eve recovers a gun and kills him.

Sullivan returns home and finds his wife in bed with another man. Ginger vows revenge on Eve for killing his brother.

Eve goes back to the roadhouse café and learns that Mick was among several people asking about her. Bernadette tells Eve that Mick mentioned heading to Opalville on a pig-shooting contract. From a sniper position, Mick shoots out the tire of Eve’s van as it drives toward Opalville.

Episode 4: Opalville – The stranded van turns out to be driven by two tourists, not Eve. Mick kills them with a hammer.

Opalville, South Australia – Eve interviews Deborah and Jason Wells, whose daughter Holly disappeared. Eve’s questions inspire a fight between Deborah and Jason in Jason’s underground snake dugout. When Jason strikes his wife and knocks her into a rock wall, Eve flees through the caverns and uncovers a hidden corpse. Jason and Eve have a physical fight, during which Eve is bitten by one of Jason’s poisonous snakes.

Eve escapes the cavern. Groggy from the snake venom, Eve crashes her van. A bushman named Uncle Paddy helps Eve recover from her injuries and teaches her how to throw a spear.

Sullivan reunites with his wife after she apologizes for her infidelity. Sullivan then returns to the Face of the Madonna café to ask Bernadette about Eve and Mick. Bernadette directs Sullivan to Opalville.

Eve encounters Deborah again, and learns that she not only survived, but she killed Jason.

Sullivan catches up to Eve in Opalville. However, Eve and her dog run away. Eve decides to search for Mick in Rome, where he has been sighted repeatedly.

Mick captures Bernadette and torments her in his hideout.

Rome, Western Australia – Eve gets a dragon tattoo on her back.

Episode 5: Rome – Rome, Western Australia – Eve works as a brunette waitress at the Rome Coliseum bar under the name Angie. Mick comes into the bar one day and Eve gets his license plate number. Eve calls Sullivan with the plate number. The number turns out to be a dead end, but making contact reunites Eve with Sullivan.

While Eve visits mentally unstable bar patron Jesus to ask about escaping Mick, Mick confronts Sullivan and stabs him. Eve comes home to find Sullivan’s bloody clothes laid out on her bed. She also finds the local police sergeant with his throat slit.

Eve tells her roommate Ann-Marie to drop a hint to Mick that she can be found at an old graveyard 20 miles west. She also leaves her dog with Ann-Marie. Desiree, another waitress at the bar, overhears Ann-Marie talking to Mick and relays the same information to Ginger. Johnny, having recently amputated his own hand, overhears Desiree talking to Ginger.

Eve arms herself and holes up at the graveyard. Ginger arrives with four armed men and a shootout ensues. Ginger is about to execute Eve until Johnny comes to her rescue. Johnny reveals that he went to prison because of Ginger and had been following him all along. Johnny threatens Ginger at gunpoint, forcing him and his men to retreat.

Eve tells Johnny to leave after they share a kiss. Mick finds Eve sleeping alone. When she wakes, Eve discovers that her weapons are missing and Johnny’s decapitated body is propped up outside.

Episode 6: Wolf Creek – Thinking she will find Mick there, Eve forces Jesus to tell her where Wolf Creek Crater is. Eve follows clues and discovers Johnny’s head as well as a scrapbook detailing Mick’s childhood with an abusive father.

Flashbacks show that as a boy, Mick accidentally killed his little sister Janette by pushing her onto a rock in frustration. Mick covered up the crime by saying Janette was abducted by a traveling salesman. Mick’s father Ted finds the salesman and kills him. Ted then forces Mick to skin the man’s corpse.

Eve locates the old Taylor house. Underneath floorboards she discovers the skeletons of Mick’s parents Ted and Dolly. Mick confronts her. Eve flees outside and finds Sullivan chained up in a barn.

Mick and Eve fight. Sullivan uses his chains to pull down an overhead beam. The wooden platform above collapses onto Sullivan and Mick.

Eve returns to the house. Mick recovers and follows Eve, injuring her by throwing a knife into her shoulder. Eve throws a fireplace poker like a spear and pins Mick to a wall. Intending to bleed him out, Eve then puts various blades into Mick. Eve sets fire to the house with Mick still inside. Sullivan dies in Eve’s arms.

In the morning, Eve returns to the smoldering rubble and finds Mick missing. As police arrive at the scene, Eve drops Mick’s Bowie knife into the ground and walks into the distance.

Truck driver Ruth picks up Eve on the side of the road. Eve is delighted to discover that Ruth has her dog. Eve asks to be taken to Perth for Ann-Marie’s wedding. Uncle Paddy observes the women driving away.

---

Review:

One initial “uh oh” when a movie is turned into a TV series is fearing it might become a rehash of the film, except experienced in slow motion.  Take “From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series.”  Its first season used ten episodes to tell essentially the same story the movie told in 108 minutes.

Thankfully, that’s not the case with “Wolf Creek: The Series.”  It’s as much of a straight sequel to Greg McLean’s 2005 survival-thriller (review here) as “Wolf Creek 2,” albeit a four and a half hour follow-up spread across six episodes.

“Episode 1: Billabong” doesn’t drag out the series’ setup.  Demented Dundee serial killer Mick Taylor enters frame five minutes from the start, pulling out his first dirty deed in such fast and unexpected fashion, it genuinely made me react with an astonished, “did he just do that already?”

Mick murders the entire family of American tourist Eve and leaves the 19-year-old girl for dead.  Eve survives, something Mick’s victims generally don’t do, and her Australian Outback holiday becomes a hellbent quest to do something police can’t: track down Mick Taylor and exact bloodthirsty revenge.

Mick’s decades-long trail of missing persons hasn’t left many clues, yet police sergeant Sullivan Hill still keeps a file on hand regarding the mysterious murderer.  Sullivan might take a more cooperative stance toward including civilian Eve in his investigation, although circumstances won’t keep her out of trouble with the law.  Whether jailed for unknowingly possessing drugs, damaging police property, or escaping custody, Eve’s inadvertent antagonism of authority leaves her little choice but to go it alone.

This makes “Wolf Creek: The Series” a little like “The Fugitive,” with Eve playing Richard Kimble to Sullivan’s Sam Gerard.  Subsequent episodes see Eve traveling from town to town across Australia in search of her one-armed man, encountering colorful locals who mix her up in an hourly B story while Eve and Mick’s collision course advances along the A.

Something a viewer has to let go of in order to dig into the show is the impossible nature of how subplots and side characters routinely intersect.  Sullivan initially dismisses Eve’s intent to hunt Mick as a goose chase, discouraging her with a warning that Australia is so vast, they have better odds of finding a needle in the proverbial haystack.  Yet no matter if it is Western Australia, South Australia, or the Northern Territory, the same dozen people seem uncannily able to pass each other on roads and in bars/cafes, no matter how remote the location.

Geoffrey Hall’s cinematography makes the most of exterior scenery with lush establishing shots capturing the country’s expansive beauty and scope.  Then the ongoing arc shrinks that impression to postage stamp size, suggesting the Outback is a backyard populated by a handful of people who can’t help but bump into one another on the regular.

John Jarratt’s portrayal of Mick Taylor ranks the actor and the character among the most memorable contemporary horror villain icons.  Fans may be disheartened to hear that Mick’s reduced presence in the TV incarnation of “Wolf Creek” means Jarratt doesn’t have quite as much scenery to chew, even with a nearly 300-minute runtime.  When he does, he definitely does.  And “Episode 6: Wolf Creek” rewards patient fans with a flashback to Mick’s childhood offering some insight into his motivation.  But Mick sometimes fights to remain relevant when plotlines diverge too far from his direction.

It’s a give and take compromise, however.  Featuring Mick sparingly swings the focal point to Eve instead, and Lucy Fry makes for a more than competent Final Girl who is easy to cheer for.  John Jarratt may be top billed, but “Wolf Creek” is a showcase for Lucy Fry, who genuinely shines in her role.  Certain to play a sister to Kristina Klebe in a future project, Fry hits a fine note between resourceful and vulnerable to be capable of holding her own without a viewer feeling like she can always escape every danger unharmed.

Speaking of danger, another problematic presumption of the premise involves how scripts go about keeping Eve jumping from frying pan to frying pan when Mick’s fire is not onscreen.  It’s a necessary evil to keep action hot, but “Wolf Creek: The Series” really wants to give the impression that a blonde American on her own in Australia is unable to go anywhere without someone trying to rape, rob, or stab a knife in her stomach.

“Episode 3: Salt Lake” even reuses the same beat within the same hour through two separate instances of a skeevy man assaulting Eve inside her van.  I won’t go so far as to say that Mick’s menace is undercut by incorporating these additional dangers.  On the contrary, in one scene where Mick confronts someone else pursuing Eve, there is an intensity in their interaction that comes from half-expecting Mick’s powder keg personality to explode because he always feels like the ultimate threat.  But the persistence in how every environment and encounter seemingly conspires to kill Eve makes one wonder, can’t this poor teenager catch a break?

“Wolf Creek” stretches time with excisable fluff.  Sullivan has a subplot involving his struggling marriage that probably doesn’t have more than three minutes devoted to its advancement.  Eve’s first episode “oops” of briefly tracking the wrong man reads as nothing more than filler.  And some of Mick’s scenes are merely odd montages of him reveling in personal madness.

However, other asides stand out thanks to superlative supporting performances from actors appearing in only one or two episodes.  Deborah Mailman is enjoyably amusing as a put-upon café owner dedicated to a faded visage of the Virgin Mary on a bathroom floor.  Rhondda Findleton provides the most emotional minutes of “Episode 4: Opalville” as a grieving mother hiding her husband’s dark secrets.

At the very least, I appreciate this return to the franchise’s gritty survival-thriller roots over the more tongue-in-cheek touch of “Wolf Creek 2” (review here).  A bit more baking in the development oven and six separate episodes might read more like one cohesive whole.  Overall, “Wolf Creek: The Series” may not be essential viewing, but it is ultimately entertaining, provided there exists a willingness to invest 4.5 hours in an expansion to the movies’ mythology that matches a willingness to overlook implausible plotting.

Review Score:  65

Wolf Creek 2 Review

Wolf Creek Review

---