A studio complex just outside of Adelaide reveals much about the carnage ahead that will be wreaked by Australia's most iconic fictional serial killer.
Walking around the set of the new Wolf Creek TV series throws up many chilling reminders of the cold brutality of Mick Taylor, the cackling devil in the flannel shirt inhabited so definitively by John Jarratt.
On the set, the signs are ominous. There are severed body parts, burnt-out vehicles, an antique grindstone for knife-sharpening. And then there's the most chilling place of all: Mick's lair.
The lair, Mick's brutally practical torture chamber, is familiar, terrifying territory. There are iron tools and manacles, and a cage for the prey unlucky enough to cross his path. There's the trophy wall featuring souvenirs taken from his victims: photos, rego plates, cameras, bikinis and video cameras.
Facing into the dank setting is an instant, immersive reminder of the horror that has happened within Mick's lair.
And now he's back for more.
Greg McLean, the writer-director of the cult horrors Wolf Creek (2005) and Wolf Creek 2 (2013), has teamed up with Underbelly writer-producers Peter Gawler, Greg Haddrick and Felicity Packard to bring a new chapter to audiences with a six-part series.
The idea of Wolf Creek as a TV show sprang out of McLean's two prequel novels Wolf Creek: Origin and Wolf Creek: Desolation Game and has been turned into a Stan Original series, a homegrown drama from the streaming service, co-owned by Fairfax Media.
McLean says it's a "great expansion to this really obscene world".
"It's certainly not a horror film in the same way that the films are horror films," he says. "It's actually a suspense thriller and really a character piece, because fundamentally we're following a character who's not Mick into his world. Mick is a big part of it, but really we're following another character and the drama that's going on around that person."
Step up 24-year-old Lucy Fry, a Brisbane actor who plays Eve Thorogood, a US tourist who is the sole survivor after her family is massacred by Taylor. She escapes but then, with nothing to lose, chooses to embark on a mission to hunt down Taylor and seek revenge.
It's an entirely different tone for the series, putting a young, female protagonist in charge and turning the hunted into the hunter. It makes perfect sense that the set's hair and make-up trailer has on its wall an image of Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, as inspiration. Eve is a natural successor, a new victim turned relentless warrior.
"What I love about it is you would think that just a little blonde thing would be one of the victims," says Fry. "That she would just be one of the many people who gets killed, and I love that she doesn't let that happen. It turns it more into a psychological thriller.
"And the way they are shooting it is very much inside Eve's head and you get into the mental space that she's in. It's a lot more interesting than just the blood and gore."
It's very much a physical role, too. Eve is a former athlete forced to give up on her Olympic ambitions after becoming addicted to painkillers. The demands of the role, as she gives chase to Mick, were heightened by the extreme conditions while filming last year, with the crew working around bushfires and temperatures soaring into the mid-40s.
"It was great because it gave me a way to understand how she feels at first – lost and isolated and very alone in that landscape," says Fry, who excels in depicting her character's pain and angst. "But then as she goes on, she becomes part of it. She becomes as rough, as rugged and as unpredictable and wild as the landscape she's in. It's been amazing that we've had such extremities to be able to use it in that journey."
Jarratt agrees that the landscape, depicted with breathtaking cinematic intensity, is an essential part of the Wolf Creek story.
"That's the other major character in these films: the outback," he says. "The mystery and intrigue and fear of the outback, and the fearfulness that people get who aren't from the outback, who find themselves because their car broke down in a town that's a pub, a church and a tennis court with a bunch of cow cockies who are starved of female company and who are drunk as a lord at 10 o'clock at night, and it's dark outside and there's nowhere to go.
"That's the dark side that lives everywhere in the outback. It's a very daunting, mysterious, scary place. It's like the ocean, you know. It looks fantastic but when you swim in it, there could be a white pointer anywhere. People die out here, not just from human beings going nuts, but they die of thirst and hunger and stuff, so it's scary in that regard. "
Tony Tilse, the award-winning Underbelly director, helms the first five episodes with McLean taking on the season finale. As the series progresses with its emphasis on character and storytelling, we get more of an insight into Taylor's story and what might have shaped him. But does it lead to sympathy for him?
"I hope not," says Jarratt. "I don't want any sympathy for him, and Mick doesn't want any sympathy. See Mick has never said [puts on mock therapist voice], 'I wonder if it's my mother's fault.' He never questions it. He's fine with the whole goddamn thing, like Ku Klux Klan members, they're happy with that, you know. They can't see any problem with it.
"Mick can't see any problem with it, so he never questions himself, he never gives you the 'why is this happening? Where's the inner turmoil? What would Freud think of all this?' That never comes into it. The only thing that ever comes into it is, 'What am I going to eat tonight?' That's about as thoughtful as he gets."
Alongside Taylor is a rich cast of Aussie acting talent including Deborah Mailman, Miranda Tapsell, Gary Sweet and Jack Charles. On Team Lucy is detective Sullivan Hill (Dustin Clare from Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities), who says Tilse and director of photography Geoffrey Hall have put together something "original and striking".
"Visually, it's got a very western sensibility and style about it, and I think they're really trying to push the TV genre in Australia to places that it might not have been pushed before. That puts pressure on everyone, but they are making a really interesting series because of it.
"You can feel on set that you're at least creating something that's pushing the boundaries and is actually trying to be tonally a fresh voice on the Australian television landscape."
WHAT Wolf Creek
WHEN Stan from May 12.
