Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 55%, based on 119 reviews, with an average rating of 5.8/10. The website's critical consensus states: "Though Wolf Creek is effectively horrific, it is still tasteless exploitation." The film also has a score of 56 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 26 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare grade of "F" on a scale of A+ to F.
Upon the film's premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2005, Dennis Harvey of Variety praised the film's "richly atmospheric" photography and McLean's direction, comparing it to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, though noting: "Ending on a rather bleak note, and lacking the kind of false scares or other devices that normally give horror auds an occasional breather, [Wolf Creek] is scary cinema pushed to the brink of punishment. But there’s no question that what it sets out to do, it does alarmingly well."
Paul Byrnes of The Sydney Morning Herald praised Jarratt's performance in the film, ultimately deeming it "exceptional Aussie horror". The Age's Jim Schembri called the film "a cheaply made, highly derivative, blood-soaked splatter film in which a clutch of young people on holiday encounter a psychopath with a love for dismemberment and laughing out loud when he hurts someone", though noted: "What sets [it] apart is the skill with which McLean synthesizes his cinematic sampling into a seamless, deeply seductive narrative. He winks at his references but never takes his eye off his own story or his brilliant modulations of suspense and character tension". In the United Kingdom during its September 2005 theatrical run, The Independent praised the film for its departure from typical genre prototypes. The Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw awarded it four out of five stars. Time Out wrote of the film: "by making us feel the pain, Greg McLean's ferocious, taboo-breaking film tells us so much more about how and why we watch horror movies".
Critical reviews in the United States varied: Several critics, such as the Chicago Sun-Times's Roger Ebert, lambasted the film's depiction of violence, and with some even walking out of screenings. Ebert awarded the film a zero out of four stars, writing: "It is a film with one clear purpose: To establish the commercial credentials of its director by showing his skill at depicting the brutal tracking, torture and mutilation of screaming young women. When the killer severs the spine of one of his victims and calls her 'a head on a stick,' I wanted to walk out of the theater [...] There is a role for violence in film, but what the hell is the purpose of this sadistic celebration of pain and cruelty? The theaters are crowded right now with wonderful, thrilling, funny, warm-hearted, dramatic, artistic, inspiring, entertaining movies. If anyone you know says this is the one they want to see, my advice is: Don't know that person no more." Similarly, The Seattle Times film critic Moira Macdonald wrote that Wolf Creek was the first film she ever walked out of; she called watching the film "punishment" and wondered how someone's real death inspired this "entertainment". Manohla Dargis of The New York Times noted: "Mr. McLean has apparently watched his share of Val Lewton, the legendary B-movie producer... who could raise shivers just by dimming the lights. Alas, Mr. McLean's commitment to contemporary genre expectations turns out to be unwavering and what follows these imaginative night tremors is just the usual butchery".
Michael Atkinson of The Village Voice wrote of the film: "The ambitions are so paltry that our response should be too: Wolf Creek is unimaginative, light on the grue and heavy on the faux-serious desperation. It's actually something of a Spanish Inquisition–level trial by overacting—the three leads are low-budget dull, but as the anti–Crocodile Dundee, Jarratt is a leering, jeering, winking, colloquialism-belching horror". G. Allen Johnson of the San Francisco Chronicle, however, praised the film's "naturalistic" style, writing: "What's Christmas Day without a good serial killer movie? There are no obnoxious teenagers in Wolf Creek, nor are there ghosts, possessed children, haunted web sites or supernaturally produced videotapes. There isn't even an Asian horror film upon which to base the screenplay. Instead, there is desolation, real terror and one hell of a villain in rural Australia in Greg McLean's energetically gritty bit of low-budget showmanship". Josh Bell of Las Vegas Weekly also gave the film a favorable review, describing it as "an unsettling minimalist film in the vein of early Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper, right down to its dubious claims of being based on a true story. Eschewing many tired conventions of recent Hollywood horror movies, McLean achieves his scares by actually depicting scary events, rather than just turning up the music or having people jump out from behind closed doors."
The film magazines Empire and Total Film gave the film 4/5 stars, with Empire calling it "a grimy gut-chiller that unsettles as much as it thrills, violently shunting you to the edge of your seat before clamping onto your memory like a rusty mantrap".
.jpg?width=400)
