I'm generally not one for werewolf
movies. I think it has something to do with the monster being human
some of the time. I like my monsters monstrous and my humans
monstrous without changing into a different creature altogether.
Maybe I just find the whole werewolf metaphor a bit too on-the-nose.
There are exceptions of course. An
American Werewolf in London, obviously. Gingersnaps.
Dogsoldiers. I like these movies because their stories deal
with the change and what it represents in interesting ways. David
doesn't understand what's happening to him and has trouble dealing
with his guilt; Gingersnaps is as much about sexual maturity
as it is about subverting conformity; and Dogsoldiers is a
cautionary tale about trusting women, I guess.
Wolves, David Hayter explained
at the North American premier, is a kind of homage to the monster
movies he grew up with. He must mean Teen Wolf because I
didn't see a lot of American Werewolf or The Howling in
Wolves (I've yet to watch In the Company of Wolves
because I'm scared of the box art). And even though he's too old to
have grown up reading young adult fiction, Wolves reads more
YA than it does straight-up monster movie.
Looking back over his writing career,
it's easy to see Hayter's influences for Wolves. X-Men
and Watchmen are about special, outstanding individuals,
supermen who are different from the rest of us and who sometimes have
trouble with human ethics and morality. In Wolves, Cayden
first struggles with being a “monster” then find peace and
meaning in a new home with people who are just like him.
Star quarterback in a small town,
Cayden's got everything going for him until a make-out session with
his girlfriend triggers his first transformation and he turns
violent. Further violence that same night prompts him to run away
from home and he drifts aimlessly, not sure about himself of what
he's doing. He tries to use his powers for good, but he can't control
them. A chance encounter with another werewolf leads him to Lupine
Ridge where he hopes to find answers. There, he finds standoffish
townsfolk and more trouble, until a farmer takes him in.
Cayden's peaceful sojourn on the
Tollerman farm is short-lived. Not long after his arrival he's
tempted again to transform and although the experience is a positive
one, it results to him learning more about his past and where he fits
in with the rest of the wolves of Lupine Ridge. Cayden is even more
special and important than he ever imagined and he believes he's the
only one who can bring a lasting peace to the wolves of Lupine Ridge.
Wolves (much like Chronicle)
is cinematic YA, which is just a way of saying the movie is best
enjoyed and understood as a mature teen melodrama. Granted, there are
only two young people in the movie, but that only serves to highlight
Cayden's struggles; Cayden is fighting against a power greater than
himself, meaning the wolfpack that lives in the hills and his own
lycanthropy.
Speaking to the After Dark audience,
Hayter talked about how, as a writer-director, no one other than
himself is making changes to his script. One the one hand, I can
understand how great that must feel, to be able to see your script
made the way you imagined. On the other hand, this kind of auteurship
can blind you to the problems in your story. And Wolves is not
without its problems.
A big exposition dump late in the movie
reveals story developments that should have been teased out over the
course of the film. Nothing is gained by holding back this
information from the characters. In fact, had Cayden known Connor's
side of things, it would have added more depth to their relationship.
Moreover, a great deal of the film's backstory involves Cayden's
grandfather, who isn't present in the movie. He, in addition to
Connor, seems to be the root cause of all the conflict in the story
but he's not around to sway opinions one way or another. Rather,
someone else in the present has gone to great lengths to manipulate
Cayden but this character is so marginalized that when he makes his
motivations known, it just feels tacked-on.
Everything else about the movie is well
done and Hayter made of point of having his werewolves look and fight
like human animals. “I wasn't going to put a snout on an actor,”
he said, preferring instead a creature design that allowed his actors
to emote through the makeup. Jason Momoa does such a fabulous job
being powerful and overbearing in human form, the werewolf seems
almost unnecessary, which is the point, but everyone else does a good
job balancing their human-shaped civility with their werewolf-shaped
brutality.
As a YA genre tale, Wolves
checks all the boxes and will certainly delight young horror fans.
Whether the film will resonate with the old school monster crowd
remains to be seen. The film opens in the US and Canada on November
14.
No comments:
Post a Comment