It's a tricky thing, making a truly successful horror film. Take Wolf Creek, the new Australian thriller, for example. It has all the elements horror flicks -- and, in particular, slasher movies -- hold dear, but it lacks an intriguing style, a panache tying everything together that makes the movie more than just another slasher flick. Wolf Creek is all bite and no bark, presenting a concept ripe for a truly visceral genre experience but without a sense of competency to pull it off.

Inspired by real-life events (an angle studios are really playing up in their horror marketing strategies these days), Wolf Creek tells the story of three friends, Ben (Nathan Phillips), Liz (Cassandra Magrath), and Kristy (Kestie Morassi). This trio of energetic youths have come together to take a little trip to Australia's Wolf Creek National Park, the site of one of the world's biggest meteor craters. The outing is wrought with beer, run-ins with unpleasant locals, young love, and maybe a bit more beer. Later, things take a sinister turn when their car mysteriously refuses to start and their watches all seem to have stopped.

Just when all hope is lost, along comes Mick (John Jarratt), a friendly guy who offers to give the kids a tow to his place and to fix their car for free. But since these people obviously have never seen a single horror film in their lives, much to their surprise Mick turns out to be quite unlike the nice guy he seemed to be. He quickly transforms into a ruthless beast  bent on torturing the kids and putting them -- as well as moviegoers like me -- through the cruelest hell they've ever experienced.

Alright. I admit Wolf Creek isn't as bad as a few other 2005 horror offerings. The ill-advised remake of The Fog still haunts my dreams, and the straight-to-video offering Dark Harvest 2: The Maize is perhaps the worst movie I've ever had to endure. But Wolf Creek is awful in its own respects. The film gets off to a dreadfully slow start, intending to acquaint the audience with the characters more than your average horror film but forgetting to give the kids anything constructive to do. By the time filmmakers kicked in with the movie's more graphic and disturbing side, I had invested very little faith in the characters and couldn't care less about their respective fates. Instead, what I cared about most was getting in the car, driving to the video store, and finding a better movie to watch.

Even though Wolf Creek stirs up some chilling moments during its final two acts, specifically the shocking "head on a stick" scene, the film as a whole never seems to generate a real aura of terror that connects with the audience. The key to a successful horror film involves intriguing the viewers with thrills, chills, and scares, grabbing their interest and thus keeping them watching. Wolf Creek depicts a situation that's more gross and disgusting than scary and entertaining; whereas standout genre flicks absorb audiences with their grim, yet fascinating sights, Wolf Creek will likely repel those very patrons it's trying to attract.

Only a few moments in Wolf Creek ring with true creativity and inventiveness (Jarratt's frighteningly bipolar performance as the Outback killer comes to mind here). For the most part, gruesome sequences play out on screen with no backbone, and the film fails to engage viewers in the experiences of the characters or to maintain their curiosity about what will happen next. 

I admire writer/director Greg McLean for trying to make a simple, bare-bones (no pun intended) homage to the sort of psychologically-driven slasher that emerged from the 1970s, and I'm looking forward to seeing how his second feature project, Rogue, turns out. But if it's anything like McLean's debut in the horror genre, he'll probably find himself up Wolf Creek without a paddle.

MY RATING: * 1/2 (out of ****)

(Released by Dimension Films/The Weinstein Company and rated "R" for strong gruesome violence and language.)