Characters / Wolf Creek

Mick Taylor

Michael "Mick" Taylor

I could tell ya, but then I'd have to kill ya!

Played By: John Jarratt

"What the bladdy hell are you sheilas doing out here?"

The Big Bad of the series and its only character to appear in all five works to date. Raised in the rural boondocks of Eribil, Queensland in the 50s to an abusive tracker father and a weak willed, catatonic mother (both alcoholics) whose family name is sadly losing it's former prestige, young Mick was frequently beaten and downtrodden. One day, while exploring the wilderness with his little sister (and being accosted by a mentally simple man), tragedy strikes. Mick states that the simpleton abducted her, and his father executes the man in vigilante justice, butchers his corpse and leaves it for the dingoes to feast on. However, it gradually comes to light that Mick was not being entirely truthful. Forced to flee, Mick lives off the land and gradually evades his father using their knowledge of tracking behaviour, then camps out in an abandoned shack, having to eat rats and facing a terrible fever to survive. He confronts his parents, and is sent to a foster camp which also hosts Aboriginals. Changing his last name to "Taylor" after his childhood best friend and bullied daily, he eventually retaliates by beating another boy so badly that his eye hangs out of it's socket by the stalk. Only barely evading serious punishment for this, he goes to work on a cattle and sheep farm out in deepest Western Australia as a teenager with several other hard man types who also have a lot to hide.

Mick starts to lapse into his impulsive, murderous tendencies again, and gradually attracts the attention of Cutter, his older Kiwi nemesis. Cutter warns him that there are "Others" who make the greater surrounding area their territory, and tries to manipulate Mick into clearing the field for the pair of them under threat of blackmail. But Mick kills him and takes up the quest of his own desire, and also to recover one of Mick's murder weapons Cutter planted somewhere in the lairs of one of the Others. He quits his jackaroo work, starts as a freelance dingo tracker, enters into a relationship with a prostitute and starts stalking the rest of the serial killers. He finds each, narrowly escaping them, but not without butchering a few more innocents himself. This draws their attention directly to him, but he just manages to take them all down and thus more or less make the great Outback his exclusive hunting range. He then decides to enlist for the army, specifically to be posted to Vietnam and hone his "craft" out there. A corrupt sergeant takes Mick under his wing and lets him join in in spoils of rape, slaughter and torture. It is in 'Nam where Mick learns the "Head In A Stick" sadistic paralysis technique. Back at home, he puts his sharpened skills to use, preying on a group of bus tourists.

Several decades later, in 1999, Mick meets the protagonists of the original Wolf Creek movie. His MO is clearly established: find a small group of tourists (preferably with one or more women among them), disarm them with his seemingly friendly manner, drug them, take them to one of his numerous lairs and torture/play with them, eventually raping the females and killing everyone according to his own whim. Only Ben Mitchell escapes this attack, and at the price of considerable physical and mental turmoil. In 2010, Mick repeats the cycle, killing a pair of jackass cops before going after a German couple. The woman manages to escape and seek refuge in the car of Paul, an English surfer, but she meets a bitter end at the hand of Mick's rifle. Infuriated, Mick chases Paul all across the outback for revenge and finally captures him. Subjecting him to some Fingore sadism and rigged quiz questions, Paul tries to escape but is recaptured by Mick, who then frames him for some of the murders and causes him to lose his sanity. Six years later, Mick happens across an American family of four. He massacres them, but unbeknownst to him Eve the daughter survives her injuries and recovers. Going on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, she sets out to track him down and end his reign of terror. He gradually becomes aware of her journey and attempts to find her himself, leaving a fresh trail of bodies in his wake.

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• Abhorrent Admirer: Is this to almost every single girl since Rose, his whore girlfriend.
• Abusive Parents: His father was an abusive drunk who frequently beat him up.
• Adaptational Personality Change: His "good" facade in the first film was significantly different than in the sequel and subsequent first and second seasons of the miniseries. In Wolf Creek, apart from one or two moments, Mick did a much better job of hiding his true nature from people and came across as charming and intriguing. But for some reason from Wolf Creek 2 onward, Mick (while pretending to be a jovial and pleasant man around miscellaneous people and/or travelers) portrays himself in a more obnoxious and much less innocent manner - occasionally letting out racist or homophobic slurs or even making it clear to those around him that he's bad news.
• The Alcoholic: It runs in the family.
• Alone with the Psycho: If this happens to you at his hand, better hope you can run and hide fast, preferably with a weapon, or that he gives you a fast Mercy Kill. He also found himself in this situation several times in Origin, but managed to prevail every single time, finally wiping out the other killers by the end of the novel.
• Animal Motifs: Mick Taylor is the lone wolf. He is cunning, very adept at hunting his prey, and usually works alone, even going out of his way to eliminate all competition in the local serial killer field. He also relishes playing with his food like a cat, and when he looks at your damaged car, he'll slither around it like a snake.
• Awesome Aussie: Very much subverted. Though still occasionally played straight, when he deals vigilante justice and does other occasional good deeds for reasons only fathomable to him.
• Ax-Crazy: Clearly not a man of sound mind, he butchers anyone he comes across in the outback, with the occasional torture and — if his victim is female — rape. However, he displays some capacity for organized thought, at least when it comes to disposing of his victims' bodies and making it look like they just disappeared. But when his victims are British, all semblance of sanity goes out the window.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: Often, Mick just kills wildlife to cull them as pests, or to live off their meat. But he sadistically plows his stolen semi tanker through a mob of kangaroos, and in the prequel novels, it's clear that on occasion he's using the slaughter of animals as practice for humans.
• Bad Samaritan: His whole MO for luring victims into his lair.
• Believing Their Own Lies: It's heavily implied that his xenophobia is just an excuse he gives himself to justify his horrid actions.
• Berserk Button: Several. Fighting back or trying to escape, for one thing. At the time of Origin, threatening and ESPECIALLY sexually abusing children (although he seems willing to hurt kids in later years). Getting in between him and his victims. Flaunting your book smarts in his uneducated face. He also seems to bear a grudge for the UK for sending colonial convicts to populate Australia, which indeed may have led to the circumstances behind his rise as a psychotic killer, as it's in the national blood to some extent. So when he meets a "Pom" on tour, naturally the button gets slammed.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: At first, he seems like a friendly, good-natured samaritan. He REALLY isn't.
• Bloodbath Villain Origin: Fulfills all the criteria.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: He's pretty warped. His code seems to be through the prism of him being one of the best hunter trackers in Australia, and him having dibs on hunting whatever species he likes and being at liberty to play with them as he pleases. Getting between him and his food is an unforgivable crime, but not always one punishable by death, as seen with Paul (perhaps because his English wit and trivia knowledge amused Mick). He's particularly rabid when it comes to foreigners in his native land, but will go after his fellow Australians too if they attract him. In his early years, he took offence to particularly sick killers and sex criminals, but given that he seems to have followed their example in middle age, clearly something about his initial opposition wore away over the decades. According to Desolation Game, he came to become a pattern killer due to the suggestion of his friend Eddie to "feed this land", suggesting he has some spiritual beliefs.
  • He got personally offended again when someone he picked up off the road said he rooted a girl who proceeded to shoot him in the leg. Perhaps because of the posturing, or because he suspected that the girl was the one he was targeting. He proceeded to hang the hitchhiker by the ankles and kill him by castration, leaving him to bleed out.
• Book Dumb: He's poorly educated but clearly very smart. However, he's suffered as a result of this as it's possible to outsmart him.
• Breakout Villain: It took eight years, but when they came, all the prequel and sequel media naturally revolve around him.
• The Butcher: Not an official nickname, but it might as well be. He's been known to carve up his victim's corpses, usually to feed them to dingoes and destroy the evidence.
• Carpet of Virility: He has a very hairy chest. It's always seen when he wears his tank top.
• Catchphrase:
  • "What the bloody hell are you buggers doing out here?"
  • "I'd tell ya, but then I'd have to kill ya!"
  • to a lesser extent "no worries"
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Aside from rape and murder, he specializes in this too. His favorite torture method is the infamous "Head on a stick" method, where a person severs a victims' spine to turn them into a human vegetable. He likes to use other tactics from time to time though, like castrating a man and leaving him to bleed out.
• Cold Sniper: Given the heat of the setting, one would almost call this a Hot Sniper, but yes. His terrifying accuracy will send chills up your spine. He's pulled off several uncanny crack shots, even before he joined the army.
• The Collector: Takes items from his victims, such as travel videos, tourist souvenirs and the like. Comes with being a Serial Killer.
• Cool Car: Initially drove an ute to get around the vastness of Australia. Then switched to a semi and a pickup tow truck to stalk his victims. The latter is particularly useful for him as it allows him to look like a friendly repairman and lure them into his domains.
• Country Matters: One of his favorite words.
• Cruel Mercy: At the end of season 2, he catches up with Kelly, but lets her wander into the desert, knowing that she would end up as food for the creatures of the Outback, whether she lives or dies.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Other than being kind of dead inside to begin with because of his broken family situation, accidentally pushing his kid sister to her death.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Just look at his backstory.
• Death Glare: Look at his character image. It might not look it, but that's the first sign that he wanted to do unspeakable things to all of his victims. It's also a tell that he was seriously pissed off by Ben comparing him to "Crocodile" Dundee.
• Depraved Bisexual: He very clearly prefers women, but when Paul accidentally causes Mick to kill the woman he was after in the second film, he decides to make Paul wear a dress and "improvise". Though by his Insane Troll Logic, he's not raping a man at all. Just don't tell him otherwise.
• Dirty Old Man: Has turned into this in his later years, another example of how You Are What You Hate.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Pressing any of his many buttons is a very bad idea.
• The Dreaded: Especially for people who happen to survive his rampages and live to tell the tale.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: His sister, his mother and his eventual girlfriend. Sadly, none of them are still around.
• Even Evil Has Standards: His disgust for the Others just adds to his resolve to take them down. And he's pissed off by unfairly been given a speeding ticket, so takes vengeance on the corrupt cops who gave it to him. Generally though, his madness is so extensive that he has very little in the way of redemptive aspects, if any at all.
• Evil Laugh: An insidious, misleading snigger. Jarret worked on it months to get it just right, and it gave his costar Cassandra Magrath nightmares. In Desolation Game:
  Mick laughed and the noise unnerved Jewel; it was like the growling, grumbling engine of the man's ute.
• Evil Old Folks: Being a Vietnam veteran, this makes him at least 65 years old by the start of the television series. He's still tough as nails, and as evil as he ever was.
• Evil Orphan: What he would eventually become.
• Evil Poacher: Has elements of this, although most of the wildlife he takes down he is licensed to do by his employers.
• Evil Sounds Raspy: He talks in a very hoarse Aussie voice.
• Exploring the Evil Lair: Had to do this once or twice when trapped and hunted by his rival serial killers. Then subjected his victims to the same treatment years later.
• False Friend: Will usually get you some booze and crack some jokes just to put your guard down.
• Faux Affably Evil: As discussed in his biography section, his MO for attacking his victims starts by appearing to be a friendly and funny, if crude, Aussie yokel.
• Flanderization: He "jokes" about foreigners being "vermin" in the first movie, but never expresses this view again for the remainder of the movie. In the sequel, he repeatedly makes it very clear that xenophobia is his primary reason for murder.
• For the Evulz: His main motivator for his crimes. Apart from when he takes something upon himself, like cleansing Australia from visiting foreigners or to eliminate other killers from his territory.
• Freudian Excuse: Various ones. His father instilled in him the awe of conquering an animal and taking its power. His old man also terrified him with his alcoholic, abusive behaviour. His friend Eddy Taylor explained that the Aborigines believe that by slaying and skinning a foe, and wearing the hide, you can fully absorb its qualities and embody them in a new form. Being threatened by other serial killers also intimidated Mick into becoming the apex predator of the Outback.
• From Camouflage to Criminal: Essentially inverted then played straight. Mick was a serial killer long before he fought in Vietnam. But it was there that he perfected his skills in murder and torture. He then went home and started practising said skills in earnest.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Started as a simple boy of a hunter tracker in the isolated, middle of nowhere Outback. Turned into one of the most notorious and elusive serial killer/rapist/torturers in Australian history.
• Genius Bruiser: He's a very talented hunter and tracker, not to mention that he's been getting away with his crimes for years.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: He can usually keep it under control but it's clear it takes very little to set him off.
• Hate Sink: One of, if not, the most vile, depraved and loathsome scumbags in Australian cinema. The TV series plays his depravity for all it's worth, making a point to emphasize that beneath his disturbingly humorous personality, he is nothing but a cruel, subhuman monster that has long since let go of any capacity for decency.
• Hearing Voices: Becomes subject to the voice of Eddie Taylor, his deceased (albeit not at his hand) childhood friend, who tells him more about the "power of this land" in Desolation Game. Eddie suggests to him to carry on his killing sprees, to feed the land with the blood of his victims.
• The Hedonist: He'd straight up be a Straw Nihilist if it weren't for him adoring the sick thrill of the hunt (sometimes as the hunted), the games he likes to play, and the self imposed task of keeping Australia free from "foreign vermin... stinking introduced species".
• He-Man Woman Hater: Why he targets women in particular and violates them. It probably stems from some of his earliest interactions with them; he remembers his mother as a pathetic alcoholic who couldn't stop his father abusing them, and the first social outing he and the other station workers went on was to get drunk and partake from the adjoining whorehouse.
• Hot Blooded Sideburns: And he is a very hot blooded character, being an Aussie, even though his violent nature can be particularly cold blooded at times.
• Hunter Trapper: His main source of freelance employment.
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Loves above all else hunting, sadistically playing with and manipulating humans. He'll even let them get away or use weapons against him, just to add to the thrill of the chase.
• Hypocrite: He loathes foreigners, and tourists in particular. Never mind the fact that Australia was originally a prison colony for criminals being shipped from England, which strongly suggests that he, himself, is descended from the very foreigners he hates.
• Iconic Outfit: His hunting hat along with his plaid shirt and dark blue denims. Also his blue tank top when he doesn't wear the hat and the shirt.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: He's also a serial rapist. It makes his Evil Laugh when he's got a girl all alone even worse.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Implied, but to date, never outright confirmed to be a cannibal.
• I Lied: Pulls this occasionally with some of his victims. Particularly of note is Brian, who he shoots just as he allows him to leave, seemingly out of admiration for his cold-blooded murder of Nina and his selling out the rest of the group.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: He loves driving his bowie knife through his victims. And he ends up on the receiving end of this at the end of the first season of the TV series, though he survives.
• Implacable Man: Increasingly so with each entry. In the first, Kristy shoots in the neck with his own rifle, but it doesn't slow him down much. Paul smacks him in the face with a hammer in the sequel, and he gets right back up as Paul is about to finish him off. And in the first season of the TV series, Eve impales him with a fire poker and the broken pieces of her javelin, then burns his childhood home down while he's apparently unconscious. The ending reveals that he's escaped.
• Insane Troll Logic: He is obsessed with keeping Australia free from foreigners, even if that means brutally murdering his fellow Aussies.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: Has a taste for this ever since being with his self-harming prostitute girlfriend, Rose. He sometimes ejaculated on her fresh wounds.
• Invincible Villain: No one seems able to keep him down for long and he's so far suffered zero consequences for all of his horrible actions besides temporary physical pain.
• Karma Houdini: Thus far, he's always managed to escape justice or any form of retribution for his crimes. The closest anyone's ever come to killing him is when Eve impaled him with a fire poker and burned his house down while he feigned unconsciousness.
• Kick The Son Of A Bitch: In his early years, he did this a lot as noted below. He also castrates Eve's attempted rapist in the series.
• Knight Templar: Absolutely despises foreigners and will go to horrific lengths to keep Australia "clean", even if it means killing anyone who tries to protect his victims from him. Even his fellow Aussies.
• Lack of Empathy: As the rest of the tropes here can attest to.
• Laughably Evil: From time to time. His Cold-Blooded Torture of Paul comes to mind.
• Large Ham: He's quite bombastic and loud.
• Made of Iron: Even taking his own knife to the chest isn't enough to put him down permanently.
• Moral Myopia: Mick is enraged with Paul for accidentally making him kill the German woman, despite the fact that he is the reason she was placed into danger in the first place.
  • Also, in Origin, Mick is appalled at one of his former coworkers trying to kill him and force him to kill him back, despite baiting him by murdering his dog and forcing him to eat some of the remains.
• My God, What Have I Done?: His reaction when he killed his sister. He partly mentally blocked it out as a coping mechanism. Notably, he never seems to have such regrets after killing any of his future victims.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Mick gets shot in the neck by Liz, but other than going unconscious, suffers little ill effects and is soon back on the hunt. Lampshaded by him in reaction to the terror of his victims:
  "I got a bullet hole in me neck and I'm not whingeing, am I? No!"
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Some of his kills in Origin are definitely this. One of the Others is a disgustingly obese pedophile who abducts children, rapes them in his compound, steals keepsakes from them and leaves them to rot as they try to escape and fall to his booby traps. He even brings their parents to the burial place if they find his hideout, likely making them aware of their child's suffering just to increase their anguish. Mick finishes him off by forcing him to eat his own guts. Another of the Others are a pair of Serbian brothers who run a local crime syndicate and in particular, get off to videos of horrifying sexual torture of people by rats devouring them.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He absolutely detests foreigners. Given the level of brutality he shows female victims, he also seems to be a pretty intense misogynist.
• Pragmatic Villainy: He lets some people go in some of the series installments without a second thought if they can give him information (and he doesn't have to interrogate for it, just ask calmly), a pint of beer or some fuel. And as a bushwhacker he's employed by local authorities to help kill invasive species and pests. Sometimes even this isn't enough to save yourself from him, if you keep interacting with him (and thus getting more chances to tap his Berserk Button) over the fullness of time, or if he's going by a murderous whim.
• Sadist: It's clear that he really enjoys what he does.
• Self-Made Orphan: Killed his sister by accident, his mother probably due to a warped sense of wanting to do right by her and end the misery, and his father out of lust for revenge and to try to steal his power.
• Serial Killer: He's tortured, raped, and killed an untold number of victims, possibly in the dozens or even the hundreds. He also likes to collect souvenirs from them, such as cameras and photographs.
• Serial-Killer Killer: Took out the Others to leave the Outback free for him to prowl and choose victims as he liked, and as insurance against the inevitability that if he didn't kill these people, they'd have found and got him themselves as he's a young upstart and might draw unnecessary heat against all of them. It also provided him with an opportunity to steal their weapons, equipment, base of operations, vehicles and even some of their techniques and use them as his own. And, they appalled him.
• Serial Rapist: He doesn't just kill women, he also violates them.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: He has quite a foul mouth.
• Smug Snake: While he's very sharp and cunning (like a wolf!), he is poorly educated and it is possible to outsmart him in certain cases. He's also shown some poor judgment on occasion like yelling at Liz while she held a loaded rifle on him, or granting Paul's request of cutting off a finger on his left hand which gave him a chance to flee.
• The Sociopath: A hedonistic Serial Killer who cares for no one.
• Tattooed Crook: Sports a long military dagger on his left arm to signify his service record.
• There Are Two Kinds of People in the World:
  Mick: You see, in this world, there's people like me and there's people like you. And people like me eat people like you for breakfast and shit 'em out.
• To the Pain: Frequently tells his victims just how he's going to make them suffer.
• Tranquil Fury: This is usually bubbling up within him for any given social interaction. Pray you aren't around when it finally boils over.
• Unexplained Recovery: It's never explained just how the fresh hell he managed to survive being impaled through the chest by a fire poker and then having his torso skewered by the broken halves of a javelin.
• The Vietnam Vet: Didn't sign up for Australia's effort in the war at the first opportunity due to bad legs, but eventually decided to for a change of scene and as "a scholarly exercise". Unlike many examples of this trope, he didn't come home traumatised beyond a bit more paranoia and his already present insanity. It helps that Aussie soldiers were well equipped for jungle warfare and counter insurgency, much more so than the USA. And, well, he met a kindred spirit there.
• Villain Ball: Grips this occasionally due to sloppiness with guarding his victims. Sometimes they escape, but he ''mostly' recaptures them then finishes them off or metes out some other form of punishment. By the time of the miniseries, however, he's accidentally letting Eve go with just a non-fatal bullet wound and a thirst for revenge. He also leaves a rifle casing which helps the police track him down. And his patterns of killing leads Eve to finally find him and it almost proves to be his undoing.
• Villain Protagonist: The prequel novels cast him as this, being from his narrative standpoint. But in the visual media (i.e. the two films and the miniseries), he's very much just a villain antagonist, even if he is the central thread linking all the works together.
• Who's Laughing Now?: The traffic cops learned all too late that this is NOT a man whom you should belittle, or really even come into contact with at all.
• Would Hit a Girl: Oh yes indeed. His torture of women has a sexual dimension, whereas he just plays with and kills his male victims (who are generally just obstacles to him in front of the sheilas). Also has no problem bearing his fists or many weapons on a girl.
• Would Hurt a Child: Not during Origin, when he still had some humanity in him. By the time of the first film however, he has no problem killing kids. A video shows that he killed an entire family, including a little girl. He also had no problem killing Eve's little brother in the TV series.
• Worthy Opponent:
  • Possibly sees Eve as this. He survives her attempts to kill him in the series and doesn't go after her when she's asleep. It's unknown if this was out of respect or because he'd come to be afraid of her. Possibly a mixture of the two.
  • He also seems to view Brian as one after finding out that he's a murderer as well, and willingly allows him to leave unharmed when he willingly sells out the rest of the survivors. That is, until he shoots him as he climbs the ladder.
• You Are What You Hate:
  • For all he despises his father, he's basically turned into him but as a serial killer and rapist. He was also disgusted by the sex criminal side of the Others, but in his older years he's sadistically abusing women, turning them into his slaves and specifically preying on them. He might even be comfortable with pedophilia at this point.
  • Also, despite all his diatribe against foreigners, he is descended from one of the criminals who was sent to Australia when it was a prison colony. He seems to acknowledge this, though, and as Paul learned, it "gives [him] the shits."