It's the rare horror film these days that comes attached with a point and allows room for contemplation. Greg McLean's Wolf Creek, his directorial debut, is the story (based on actual events) of three fit and adventuresome travellers on a road trip across the Australian outback who become ensnared in one of those missing persons stories you hear about every so often in the news but don't pay much mind to. This is a film that believes we should and tries to jolt us out of this complacent attitude that allows us to overlook such a thing. His aim with Wolf Creek is twofold: to pay tribute to their lives and to document the ghastly and horrific circumstances which enveloped them on their simple excursion, based on the testimony of the lone victim to have survived. Viewed in this light, Wolf Creek is less of a traditional horror film and more of a visceral connection between the audience and the victims, much in the same way Mel Gibson's The Passion Of The Christ sought to give viewers the most urgent and immediate link possible between them and Jesus Christ. However, whereas Christ's death carried religious and spiritual import, the pain and suffering inflicted upon this trio (and others similarly attacked) has served no purpose - a disconcerting thought which McLean wants to convey to those of us who feel far removed from such acts of violence. Wolf Creek is a howl of anguish and sorrow against the undeserved fates of its characters as anonymous victims.

McLean's approach to the story is inspired, taking the original events and finding in them a larger truth about our general tendency live life at a glance. Consider the location where everything transpired. Wolfe Creek, the actual name given to the site of an ancient crater in the desolate outback region of Western Australia, is the result of a meteor's impact less than a million years ago. It is a sizeable dent in the earth's surface, measuring almost a kilometer in diameter, and is deep enough that its outer ridges must be perilously scaled like the face of a mountain. How strange, as one of the characters remarks, that it went undetected by most of the world until 1947 when European explorers chanced upon it and heralded its discovery. Perhaps the best and only explanation for such a thing to escape detection for so long is that so much of the outback looks the same - endless stretches of mostly nothing. It is one of the few places such a crater could have remained hidden on the earth's surface, and as McLean is very aware, one of the bleakest environments for people to go missing. He heightens this dreadful sentiment throughout the film with his various use of broad and close-up shots, at one turn overwhelming his characters with the vast Australian landscape and at another pausing to examine a spider's web or the thrashing waves by the shore set against the placidity of the overall ocean. Already with his first feature film, McLean demonstrates a definite knack for establishing mood and atmosphere.

As a counterpoint to the cruelty in store for the road-bound trio, a significant portion of Wolf Creek is spent developing their individual personalities and outfitting them with feelings, beliefs, intelligence, and quirks all their own. They felt real, like actual people I went to university with. Ben (Nathan Phillips), a young man of boundless energy, is at once brazen and soulful; Liz (Cassandra Magrath) is courageous both in love and deathly situations; and Kristy (Kestie Morassi) is a loyal friend who is somewhat meek by nature but capable of cutting loose when goaded by the situation at hand. The problem, so far as I see it, with the usual crop of horror films is that they erroneously believe that by sacrificing characterization for cheap thrills and gore galore they are somehow amplifying the amount of payoff. They confuse quantity for quality and don't understand that true horror films are disturbing and unnerving experiences, and only so when we care about the characters. The best horror films provoke us to ask ourselves questions about why we are afraid, why we are disgusted, and what we can possibly do with those answers. Anything else offers nothing more than basic, safe entertainment.

That said, Wolf Creek disappointingly falters as soon as the actual carnage takes place, as if trying to pander to a safer brand of horror. Once everyone realizes they are being held captive by a serial killer, things unfold rather predictably. Cars don't start as quickly as we'd like them to - a requisite feature of vehicles appearing in horror films - while a bullet in the villain's neck barely immobilizes him or prevents him from positioning himself in precisely the right places to catch his prey. The tension this created rang quite false to me. Still, the terror remained quite palpable. Instead of a casual display of shocks and violence for the gore-fiends, which the misleading marketing campaign embarassingly advertises, the film's final act felt like an outright assault - unpleasant, unenjoyable, and relentless. This is not necessarily a criticism, though. While the acts of violence committed are deeply offensive and barbaric, Wolf Creek is neither of those things. To the extent that this story is about missing persons, the evil of the killer has indeed prevailed, yet there is hope to be found. The meteor crater at Wolfe Creek was revealed in time, after all, and with this film and the continued efforts of those who are resistent to letting the memory of the real-life victims die out, we may be optimistic that the concentrated evil that struck at the very same crater will one day make itself known publicly too. You may need to dig a little deep to find it, but this is a film about fostering compassion.

(Wolf Creek is currently playing at the Empire 8, Trinity Drive cinema, located at 125 Trinity Drive in Moncton.)