ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes how Australian films about killer crocodiles use horror conventions to engage anxieties about identity and belonging in a settler colonial society. These texts contribute to the nationalist project of constructing a mythic image of Australia as an unpeopled land where individuals must battle indigenous beasts. Through discussion of these films’ presentations of predatory animals and formidable landscapes, this chapter assesses how these texts allegorically engage the relationship of Anglo-Australians to the continent’s Aboriginal population. It also examines the ecological fantasies offered by these films, as they upend and reaffirm Western humanist orthodoxies justifying environmental and colonial violence.
