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Making a genre picture in Australia is a bit like selling snow and ice to eskimos. The Americans churn them out cheaply like snow cones for their domestic market, and when they hit on a good thing, they do sequels even more cheaply. This product is dumped into the Australian market, and often makes a killing in more ways than one. If you're an Australian distributor, why would you back an Australian genre picture up against this tidal wave of dumped goods?

Well if you do and you luck in, you can make a fortune (and set up your own sequels) as Mad Max demonstrated a long time ago. If you make a broad comedy, you can even cash in with a Crocodile Dundee.

Both these films get a homage in Wolf Creek, with its writer director Greg McLean clearly an avid student of the dark side of film-making.

On the dull side of course there's all the well meaning art house shows currently doing the rounds, like Look Both Ways and Little Fish. These attract AFI awards, but don't do too well with the punters - Little Fish has struggled to hit the $3 million mark at the Australian box office, a long way from the glory days of Lantana and Rabbit Proof Fence.

Of course these shows are being talked up as heralding a renaissance, now that the embarrassment of the even more dull award sweeping Somersault is  behind us. But it's hard to see much of a renaissance when a film costing over ten million dollars (including a mill plus for the lead actress) struggles to haul in three at the local box office. By the time you do the calculations that means - even using a generous formula - that a half mill might head back to the investors. It's easy to bet Little Fish will never see a profit, as it will only do the festival and art house market internationally. It's about junkies. What do you expect?

Contrast Wolf Creek, about to go into general release. It was picked up by the Weinsteins in the States for US $8 million, and is now getting a big Halloween release. It sold well in other territories, and recently did okay business on release in the UK after a solid sale. As it cost A$1.3 million or thereabouts, it's way into profit before it gets itself in front of an Australian audience.

Ah but then, unlike the arthouse films intent on exploring the meaning of life - of interest only to minorities here and in the US - it's actually aimed at pleasing an audience.

This audience isn't mainstream. For a start it's picked up an R rating, for understandable reasons, and there are a lot of women who will find the violence disturbing or offensive. The real audience is for people who like a bit of slice and dice, mingled with a kind of Wake in Fright evocation of just how deadly and alien the outback is, providing shelter for predators who pick off innocents.

The story is pretty simple - back packers pick up a cheap car in Broome and decide to drive overland, stopping along the way the see an ancient bowl carved out in the desert by a meteor strike. Nathan Phillips plays the guy escorting two English women (Cassandra Magrath and Kestie Morassi), and they all manage to be convincing in a kind of 'waiting to be victims' way.

Unfortunately they stumble across a roo shooter, and genial sociopathic psychopathic John Jarratt, who seizes his role like a starving kelpie getting a hold of a roo tail. More ham on this bone than generally blesses a genre picture, and he injects the spark that's needed to keep all three victims in peril in a Texas Chainsaw Massacre kind of way. And when he turns from being nice to nasty, by golly he gets real nasty.

After the trio come back from their walk into the meteor (in a gentle, evocative drizzle), they discover their car won't start - and worse still, they accept Jarratt's offer to use his behemoth beast of a truck to tow them back to his lair, where he can fix the coil for them (no surprise we learn he's spent their away time making sure the car won't go).

However there's no need to do spoilers here - McLean prepares a few nasty surprises for his victims - and squeamish viewers must be prepared to look away a number of times. Plenty of knife work and the odd angry shot or two.

The film is not without fault. The $1.3 million budget shows in many places, including a tendency to softness in many of the wide shots. McLean starts the show too slowly - the first act is really spent getting the trio on the road, with lots of by ways evoking the back packer lifestyle - and then he compensates by getting over ugly towards the end.

He also tries to be too cute in places. The story is allegedly based on true events, but this Coen Brothers conceit isn't convincing, and by the time we get to read some end cards, is inclined to be a bit tiresome and tedious (even clumsy Australian coppers might have found enough evidence and taken enough time to track down a whopper killer as portrayed by Jarratt - any link to the Falconio case is good marketing rather than a credible part of the story).

McLean also plays around a little too much - he seems intent on showing how well he can use the missing keys in the ignition riff by using it way too many times. Even as a joke, it gets a little wearing. Ditto the number of references to the Crocodile Dundee gag about 'that's not a knife, this is a knife".

Similarly the reference to Mad Max when Jarratt hits the road in a rev head car in the third act is a little too contrived. And it gets irritating when the heroine - being chased by a class A psychopath - takes time out to review some video footage for the convenience of the back story, so we (and she) can find out a little about what Jarratt's been up to in the past. Run, girl, run - throw away the camera and get on the move - don't hang around helping out the director by reviewing the visuals.

There are a number of other unlikely contrivances, but mentioning these would involve spoilers, so let's leave that to viewers to decide for themselves. On the plus side, McLean shows a good eye, and makes great use of the wonderful sparse South Australian locations - not least the meteor crater, but also the footage of the outback, and the stand in SA beach used in place of WA.

After the slow opening, he also moves things along at a fast clip, and provides plenty of energetic coverage as the trio v the psycho action gets into gear. He also keeps the performances working well on the basic level of young women in peril. And if nasty is what you're after, nasty is what you will get. For the money, it's an above average effort.

McLean is now about to shoot another story of tourists in peril - this time a bunch get trapped by a rogue crocodile, who likes to take bodies back to his lair for a good chomping. As a reward for his commercial instincts on Wolf Creek, he's got himself a US$25 million budget out of the States. Good luck to him, and maybe his story will inspire other genre film-makers, who won't have to make the trudge to the US - like the Saw team did - to see their show made.

However given the Mosfilm like bias towards tedious, meaningful pics in the FFC, AFC and the state bodies, it might be that Wolf Creek is a one off, and after Rogue, McLean will be forced to go to his spiritual home, the US. At least in the meantime, he and his team are re-using the same heads of departments who worked for diddly squat on Wolf Creek. That's class, and you don't often see class in the Australian industry.