10 Films You Won't Believe Were Released At Christmas

4. Wolf Creek

Release Date: 25 December 2005

Even though it opened in 1749 theaters, you were in the minority if you went to see Wolf Creek on its American release. Audiences decided the picture was too graphic for the festive season and turned their backs on it in favour of Fun With Dick And Jane and Cheaper By The Dozen 2.

Greg McLean’s debut feature is so potent, in fact, that the film’s Australian release had to be delayed lest its story of a psychopath hunting tourists in the outback influence the trial of an Australian accused of murdering a British backpacker. Had the movie been a stylized gorefest about a masked lunatic with a chainsaw, it wouldn’t have been half as controversial.

Jarrett once fronted a TV gardening programme, which is curiously apt because when we first meet him, Mick is playing to an audience, gaining their trust with his superficial charm and old school know how before allowing his mask to drop. In a movie with no shortage of disquieting moments, it’s a toss-up which moment is the most unnerving – the sequence where the backpackers realize Mick’s true intentions or his casual threats of violence, including turning one girl into a “head on a stick.”