BootsnAll Travel Community

I was co-erced into seeing Hostel last year (not as bad I imagined it would be from the publicity), saw Paradise Lost without knowing it was a horror film (duh!), and then I saw Wolf Creek last week.

Wolf Creek is just wrong on so many levels - see "making a head on a stick".

It's nasty as hell and unlike those frat boys in Hostel (they sure did have it coming), the backpackers in Wolf Creek seemed very real and sure didn't have it coming.

I'm torn between respecting the director for making a film that genuinely unsettled me, and also thinking that it's probably not a good idea to watch that stuff.

Might just squash the travel bug.

What's with the current spate of backpackers dying horrendous deaths in movies?

I haven't seen any of those, but my theory is that "it's a dangerous world 'out there'" is kind of a current theme in many circles (not so much at bna, obviously), especially when "out there" is those places where "only backpackers" go...like...anywhere outside western Europe.

I'm not saying I think this is right, but I think many people do think that way, at least to some extent.

Even if people/directors/etc are not interested in actively promoting this idea, I think it fits in with the beliefs that plenty of people already have unfortunately.

quote:

What's with the current spate of backpackers dying horrendous deaths in movies?

I wonder if the recent incidents of Canadians being killed in Mexico or the disappearance of a female backpacker in Syria are part of the reason for this horror movie trend? Or maybe directors are just running out of ideas and they are desperate for story lines?

Whether they promote the idea that it is such "a dangerous world out there" or not, if I am not mistaken the statistics still indicate that you have a greater chance of dying in a car accident than by one of the horribly vicious methods so promoted in these recent films.

Hehe. Wolf Creek. My American girlfriend moved out here to Perth to be with me. Her mom forbade her to go up north - because it's dangerous up there.

Wait till we tell her that we plan to cycle several months in Indonesia (and I still plan on a stint in PNG before we leave Oz). She's gonna have a fit (and possibly a heart attack).

Quite honestly - and somehow embarrassingly - the one movie that keeps popping back into my head while traveling is Blair Witch Project. I'm a sucker for camping 'somewhere'. Especially in Africa where I was alone and a few times in the middle of nowhere, I woke up and thought 'if the tent starts moving now, I'm going to die of a heart attack', followed by 'damn, I need to go and take a piss...this sucks'.
The next morning I usually laugh about it. But for the few minutes it lasts...it's scary.

Ha ha, yeah I saw Turistas a couple months ago. It was clichéd and silly, but good for a laugh anyway. I'm glad my parents aren't fans of the backpacker/traveler slasher genre, though. I'd never hear the end of it.

There's a new movie coming out with this theme: The Ruins