Interview: Greg McLean Explores New Landscapes of Fear With Wolf Creek 2 & 6 Miranda Drive

After putting his stamp on the nature-run-amok genre with Rogue – starring Bates Motel‘s Michael Vartan – in 2007, McLean scripted and directed Wolf Creek 2, coming to U.S. VOD on April 17th and opening in select theaters May 16th from Image Entertainment.

Jarratt returns as Taylor in a story that combines the menace and liberal bloodshed of the first film with the dangerous road games of films like Duel.

Deep in pre-production on his next film 6 Miranda Drive – starring Kevin Bacon and Radha Mitchell (more on that here) – McLean chatted with Shock about his Australian thriller as well as the film he’s at work on for Blumhouse Productions.

Ryan Turek: Were you at all concerned that you were ushering a Wolf Creek sequel into a time in horror that is slowly moving away from the torture porn era that the first film somewhat in the midst of?

Greg McLean: Not really. I guess the reality is those movies that came out of that time – Hostel, High Tension and Saw – were genuinely hard-hitting and whatever that meant to do with the time did the job. It got people back into horror. It’s definitely a different world now in horror as far as I can see. With Wolf Creek 2, we didn’t want to do the first movie all over again because that worked in a very specific way and in a specific time. This is about taking the central character out of the environment he was in in the first film and do an honest investigation of Mick Taylor and do something that’s an action film, but keeping the scary elements of the first tilm. It’s a film for a different time even though it’s still a Wolf Creek movie.

Turek: And you got to stretch your legs a bit and get a bit Mad Max-like with the car chases and such…

McLean: On one level, this film allowed me to try things I had never been able to do. I always wanted to do a crazy, expensive car chase. Structurally, turning this film into a chase story allowed me to do all of the action stuff I really love. And the counterpoint to that, I love to see tense dialogue scenes that twist and turn where it’s all about the characters and the dialogue. Really, this film allowed me to do both things. Intense action and then tense, focused drama were two things I, personally, wanted to explore.

Turek: That moment that you’re speaking about, where Mick has his prey in the chair and they share that lengthy discussion, definitely allows John to chew the scenery. How much time did you have to shoot that scene?

McLean: We had about a week to shoot it. It’s an 18 to 20 minute scene, like 10 pages. We rehearsed it like a play and tried to run it like a play. Me and the D.P. just let the actors do it and then we worked out some ideas and designed the space. We then just jumped in. I’m a huge fan of doing that kind of thing, it allowed them to breathe in the space.

Turek: You’ve worked with John on non-Wolf Creek stuff. What was it like getting him back in the skin of Mick Taylor?

McLean: Interestingly, because he had a good psychological grasp on the character the first time around, he was able to get into it much easier. It’s one of those things where you think you know what it is, but once we got into shooting, I think – for the both of us – we had to get into that frame of mind in the first film. And I think to pull this off, you have to go into a very dark place. It’s a deal to do that for John, it’s a particular world he inhabits. [laughs] To believe in that place, you have to go there. But it didn’t take him that long to get back into it.

Turek: Was there anything in this film that was perhaps something you wanted to do in the first but couldn’t execute perhaps due to time or budget?

McLean: The interesting thing about this film versus the first is that the first was made for so little money. When we got taken to the location we got to shoot at in Wolf Creek, basically it was a certain distance away from town. With this film, we’re in a large expanse of territory and basically I was able to expand on the original vision of the first movie. I was able to do justice to the landscape and that space. I used the sense of place in this film that I was only able to hint at in the first.

Turek: How was the kangaroo sequence received back home in Australia?

McLean: Everyone loves that scene. They just can’t believe what they’re seeing and, honestly, I thought it was only a minor part of the chase. I grew up in the country, so when you’re in the country in Australia, when you hit a kangaroo, it’s like hitting a deer in Alaska or something. And I know truck drivers who are out on those Outback roads do plow through kangaroo because there are just hundreds of them. I had never seen anything like that on a film and there’s nothing better than being in a cinema and seeing people respond to a sequence like that.

Turek: I’m sure Jason Blum has you on lockdown and you can’t say much about 6 Miranda Drive, but what’s getting you excited about the project?

McLean: I’ve always been fascinated with the supernatural since I was a kid. About 11, I had a ghost hunting club with my sister and best friend, we’d go an investigate haunted house. It’s something I’ve always been interested in. I had a script I was developing for a while and then after Wolf Creek 2 came around, the Blumhouse guys read the script and really loved it. It fell into place really quick. We’re shooting Monday and the it’ll be interesting to shoot something in L.A. The biggest thing for me, really, is not just creating new ways to pull off fear and suspense – which I enjoy doing – but working in a house. The other films I’ve done had me in 100-degrees heat out in the desert or in the water with the crocodile.

Turek: That’s true about finding new ways of creating fear, because everything you’ve done has been rooted in reality…

McLean: Yeah, the first Wolf Creek was about how to create characters in a genuine situation with fear and suspense. Doing a supernatural film is interesting for me because my background is theater, so performance and actors are important and that’s what excites me. It’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out here.

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