When watching a film made more than four decades ago, there is a tendency to think that some of the atmosphere and intensity might be lost. After all, horror films and thrillers these days try to push the envelop as much as they can. But walk into Wake in Fright unprepared and it will knock you out. CGI and action sequences can often become stale in just a few years time, but mood never loses its flavor.
Set in the Australian Outback around the ‘70s, the film follows John Grant (Gary Bond), a forlorn teacher in a small outback township trying to make his way to Sydney when he gets sidetracked and stuck in the odd black hole of a locale called Bundanyabba. Colloquially known as “The Yabba,” the oddities of this town start to wear down our protagonist until it becomes a full blown nightmare of booze, guns, and depravity.
Grant is on a mission to get to Sydney to see his girlfriend but has to spend the night in “The Yabba” first. He accepts the pushy hospitality of a local cop in a tour of the town. Along the way he is cajoled into chugging each beer he is handed. He is later told that the local water is only good for washing clothes, and every person he seems to run into is either chugging a beer or waiting on their next round to be poured. The local greeting apparently is buying Grant a beer. In a bit of misfortune he dries out his savings and instead of packing his bags for Sydney, he is stuck in “The Yabba.”
That situation continues to deteriorate, though the generosity of the locals with hospitality and money seem to keep him from ever hitting rock bottom in a normal sense. Instead, he plows through that mythical creation because he has no escape route or any true excuse to shrug off the locals selflessness. That isn’t to say Grant is weak, but he finds himself in a confounding position.
Director Ted Kotcheff seems intent on exploring various ideas of what people on the outskirts of humanity do for fun and how bad it may get. The grimy, gritty feel of the film helps elevate the mood. When we first meet Grant, he is fairly dapper and we slowly see his wardrobe unravel and become disheveled — for example, it’s nothing for the men and handful of women in the town to openly perspire. Eventually he starts to blend into his surroundings, becoming just as drunken and disorderly as they are.
There don’t seem to be any hard or fast lessons at play in Wake in Fright, and the film can be praised for taking on some taboo subjects, even for today’s audiences. Caught in a town that seems to be welcoming until you turn down an offer, Grant is our hero but is never given an obvious way out. Character arcs don’t seem to be important here, just survival. And one thing’s for sure: you survive Wake in Fright as much as any character within it does and that’s exactly its intention.
After screening at Fantastic Fest, Wake in Fright opens in limited rerelease on October 5th.