Wolf Creek set a high bar for Australian horror. Killing Ground is a lot more polished than the raw original Wolf Creek but captures the same intense, unforgiving violence.
You sort of know the setup is introducing characters who may or may not survive. Ian (Ian Meadows) and Sam (Harriet Dyer) are a cute couple going camping in the woods. There’s also a family with a teenage daughter Em (Tiarnie Coupland) and a baby. Of course there’s no cell phone reception in the wilderness.
Meanwhile, two killers (Aaron Pedersen and Aaron Glenane) scope out potential victims. Ruling out a single mother is good for her and paints them as dude bro sexists on top of murderers. These guys are real creeps. They pee on a car just to be A-holes. Like you can be antisocial sociopaths without being gross.
When these killers come after the campers, the victims are smart. Em lays on the horn just because a stranger is harassing her, before she even knows he’s a killer. Sam can actually fight back.
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Killing Ground is reminiscent of The Hills Have Eyes with a long torment of the family. They women have been raped, off camera but seeing the stark aftermath is a plenty horrifying reminder. It gets even worse if you can imagine that but I won’t spoil what’s worse than rape. The sick games the killers play at their expense are unsettling and they keep it going extra long so you feel the threat
If you want to make a solid survival horror, the woods of Australia is as good a place as any. They could’ve done a cabin in the woods too but a grueling fight for life was writer/director Damien Power’s jam instead. Playing in a genre sandbox is vital and Power does give his film a certain distinction.
Killing Ground has balls. The atrocities it presents are all the more sobering because they are real. There’s nothing that couldn’t happen in real life were human beings so heartless. And as a filmmaker’s calling card I can’t say I’ve seen anything this brutal presented so elegantly. Usually it’s a Texas Chainsaw Massacre type rough and raw aesthetic. Even Saw had the undercranked choppy sequences for the traps.
Perhaps it is a first to see a film this brutal look so polished. The well shot widescreen wilderness, with steady tracking shots, makes the violence unfold not in the handheld low grade 16mm of an old grind house movie, but in the familiar setting of a movie that should feel comfortable.