Papa Was a Howlin' Stone

FILM:


Werewolf: The Beast Among Us - 2012
See link for writing team
Directed by Louis Morneau

I hadn't heard of this one at all until the other day when I wrote about In the Company of Wolves and found that Stephen Rea had three werewolf movies to his credit.  Having seen the other two (Underworld: Awakening being the other) I decided to give it a shot.  The prospect of paranoia within the community sounded vaguely intriguing.

It wasn't that intriguing.

The Beast Among Us is an action movie first, and a fairly generic one at that.  The horror is primarily relegated to a bit of gratuitous gore.  It packs very little punch because it doesn't give us anything to care about.

Somewhere in the poorly defined Europe of the poorly defined past, a plague of poorly defined werewolves has stricken the countryside.  A team of werewolf hunters rides into town to deal with the menace.  But this isn't your run-of-the-mill werewolf (within this movie's mill-house, anyway).  This one turns on the waxing and waning nights of the full moon as well; rather than simply the fully full moon.  Because gravity, evidently -- and just you hush your mouth about the moon having the same gravity every night no matter which direction it's reflecting.  All you need to worry about is that these kinds of werewolves are deadlier, and potentially able to transform at will, possibly because they were born, not made.  The werewolf lore gets pretty cluttered except for in the places where it's not explained at all.

There's plenty of mistrust to go around, but very little of it plays into the kind of tense cat-and-mouse story mechanics that you wish it would.  In fact, there just really aren't many reasons to care about anything that happens because the characters are generally dull and unpleasant, and indeed, there turn out to be more bad guys than good guys.  The twists are supposed to be engaging, but they're so telegraphed by secretive behavior that they never really matter.

Oh, the film tries to define the characters, but does so through making them types.  This most strongly stands out with the hunters who are cartoonishly defined the way that "colorful" teams of mercenaries are in b-movies; through their appearance and/or their weapons.  Team leader is a Cowboy.  His lieutenant is the Casanova.  There's the Battle-Scarred Brute with the eye patch and the 2-legged horse, and his yeah-yeah-you-tell-'em-boss Toady.  And there's the Sassy Chick with the Big Guns (or an over-sized crossbow anyway).  Among the townspeople, the overworked doctor is the Stern Master to the Earnest Scholar, son of the Seen-It-All Barmaid and boyfriend of the Pretty Rich Girl.

The werewolf effects show about the same level of imagination, delivering mediocre CGI so uninspired and unexamined that the creature's downy hair makes it look cuddly.  The transformation constitutes little more than a morphing effect, which simply isn't interesting in the slightest.  The beast is most menacing when you don't see it at all.  Like the film as a whole, there's potential there, but the execution is tepid.

It's not even inspiring enough to really bag on it.  Six months from now, I'll probably stumble across it again on IMDb and think it sounds interesting, only to remember that I've seen it and it wasn't.

Wolf Children - 2012
Written by Mamoru Hosada & Satoko Okudera
Directed by Mamoru Hosada

For as little as The Best Among Us gave me to care about as a viewer, the anime film Wolf Children did the opposite.  This movie is ALL ABOUT caring, and its pacing and characterizations draw in the viewer in subtle and powerful ways.  Not a horror movie in the slightest, it is nevertheless about wolves who are people too, or vice versa.  The subject of full moons and silver bullets is addressed early on, only so it can be dismissed as mythology and the things that really matter can be explored.

Wolf Children is roughly three stories in one, and action is central to none of them.  It sets a rather leisurely pace, relying on its establishment of humanity within its characters to compel interest in what might happen next, or simply, what we might learn next.

Timid yet joyously spirited college student Hana notices a new student in class one day, and develops an instant infatuation with him.  As it turns out, he's not officially a student at all, but a humble yet decidedly dreamy mover.  Soon, they're a couple, due largely to her efforts.  His initially aloof behavior is rooted in a desire to protect himself, for you see, he is a wolf.  Rather than scaring Hana away, she accepts him as he is.  He is, as far as he knows, the last wolf left in Japan.  They're not an aggressive species, but often forced into isolation simply out of societal fears. Within two years, they've had two babies with wolfy dispositions of their own.  With all those mouths to feed, he goes out hunting one night... and doesn't return.  Between school, work and two babies who are sometimes wolves, Hana can't keep up, and decides a fresh start out in the country is called for.

The next part of the film is primarily concerned with the the struggles of single-motherhood, especially when your children are apt to turn into canines in the blink of an eye.  Hana has to learn how to farm to keep her family fed, and the help she's given is delivered in the most begrudging way possible by a surly old neighbor.  Once harvest comes and she hasn't given up, she's finally accepted into the community.  Her daughter, Yuki is a rambunctious pup, and her son Ame is a sickly little thing.  They both require their own kind of attention, on top of the needs of farm life.

The last major arc in the story concerns the children's lives as students.  Hana has learned to manage things at home a little better and takes a part time job with a conservationist group.  Yuki starts school after convincing her mother that she can control her changes, chanting "I'm going to be a little girl all the way home" to calm herself.  She thrives on the social contact.  Ame, when it's his turn for school, doesn't, and finds himself troubled by the role of wolves in the stories that they read.  In time, their relationships outside the home; Yuki with a sensitive new boy in class and Ame with his "sensei," the fox that roams the mountain behind their home, will open up new and very different paths for them and their future lives.

Wolf Children is similar in tone to some of Studio Ghibli's quieter films like Whisper of the Heart or Only Yesterday.  There were a number of moments that specifically evoked Ghibli movie for me.  It takes a very slice-of-life approach to its fantasy-based premise, and ultimately uses that premise as a vehicle for telling an allegorical tale about aspects of the human condition; single parenthood and the life choices of children coming into their own chief among them.  I don't know how intentional it was, 'cause Japan, but there would seem to be a pretty powerful story here about the struggles of raising mixed-race children in a world that hasn't come to terms with the concept as much as it thinks it has.

If I had to complain (and it's the internet, so, you know, there's a law that I must), it would be that the wolfish side of the kids and their father is pretty mild.  It's not until Ame's story arc emerges that being wolf really takes on much gravity of its own.  I also have some reservations about the wolves keeping their human hair, and this strays uncomfortably close to the world of "furries."  I feel uneasy even typing the word.  Google with caution if you're curious about the movie.  That territory is arguably breached when Hana and her wolfy young swain "mate" while he's in transitional form.  I respect that it's symbolic of her acceptance and his ability to be "naked" to her in a uniquely vulnerable way, but damn you internet for tainting this moment!  Okay, obligation fulfilled; petty complaints registered, much of it not the film's fault.

Wolf Children is simply beautiful in every possible way.  The art is exceptional.  The music affecting.  It's not that it's slow-paced as much as it leaves the spaces in between the beats, and it's in those spaces that the characters have room to grow.  It's the growth of those characters that engages us and reveals the tenderness of their humanity, which is the greatest beauty of all.  It's not about things happening, it's about the thing they make happen; the people they are over time and the choices they make, most often as expressions of love deeply felt.

Yeah I bawled.  I bawled at the moon.

That wraps it up for Werewolf Week.  I have to admit that I enjoyed it more, overall, than Anthoholic.  Starting tomorrow, we'll be back to a more arbitrary selection process leading us on through Halloween.  BE THERE.

What It Feels Like for a Girl (Part Two: The Snappening)

As discussed yesterday, Ginger Snaps attained a certain level of cultish success, at least within horror circles, and relative to cost analyses for mid-to-low budget Canadian horror.  As is the way with horror, the idea of sequels became a consideration, however Ginger Snaps ended with a relatively conclusive story closure.  For one thing, how do you make a sequel to "Ginger Snaps" when Ginger is dead?  Well, the producers found two ways (or found writers who found ways) that differed as greatly from the original as they did from each other, and then released them both in the same calendar year.

FILM:


Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed - 2004
Written by Megan Martin
Directed by Brett Sullivan

Following the events of Ginger Snaps, Brigette is now out on her own, laying low, and struggling to keep her own lycanthropic infection at bay.  The Brigette to whom we're re-introduced is still socially reclusive, but clearly stronger and more self-reliant as a matter of maturation through necessity.  Survival is a full-time occupation for Brigette, and she meticulously charts her physical changes, dosing herself on monkshood to fight her slide toward the wild side.  She's on her own, but not totally alone.  She's haunted (and taunted) by visitations (or delusions) of Ginger, particularly when she knows she's slipping.  When she overdoses on the poison to stave off a flare-up, she awakens to find herself in rehab, cut off from the resources she needs to stay in control of herself.

To a large extent, Unleashed plays like a "Women on the Psych Ward" thriller, or alternately, a "Just Say NO to Lycanthropy" after-school special about the horrors of monkshood addiction.  Brigette has to deal with fellow patients while her grasp on self-control is slipping away, an exploitative orderly with access to her medicine, and Ghost, the strange young girl who suspects Brigette's true nature, and just might know a way out of the hospital.  To make matters much worse, she can smell the male werewolf that stalks her, eager for a mate.  This plays into some distinctly sexual connotations about controlling the beast within.

In ways, this is the most horrific of the three Ginger Snaps films.  The humor of the original really didn't make the jump to the sequels.  There are definitely some ironic beats about rehab, but none of the satirical edge that so invigorated the original.  This is Brigette, the sullen one, alone against herself most of all.  If Emily Perkins had to carry the first film, she's bench pressing this one.  Katharine Isabelle's role amounts to little more than a cameo.  That makes Unleashed much darker with a greater sense of foreboding .  It's a high definition, slow motion train wreck as Brigette fights to avoid certain doom.  The ending feels a little undeserved, but it certainly fits the narrative arc of the film and the character.

Ah, there's one more thing that bears mentioning.  I took some issue with the soggy and hairless werewolf in the first film, but the sequels seem to demonstrate that the transformation is by-and-large a much more gradual process than we're accustomed to in other movies.  The werewolves grow more hair over time, the further they move away from being human.  In fact, they turn out to be some of the wolfiest werewolves (that aren't just wolves) in any of werewolf movie I've watched.

Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning - 2004
Written by Christina Ray & Stephen Massicotte
Directed by Grant Harvey

"Together again... for the very first time!"

Rather than curing and/or resurrecting any characters for another go around, this is a sort-of prequel that inserts Ginger and Brigette into the origins of their curse.  Set in 1815, The Beginning tells the story of a time when the Wendigo's curse from native legends reached a transformative turning point on the Canadian frontier.  Traveling alone in the wilderness, the two girls with secrets behind them arrive at a frontier outpost in the dead of winter to find a dwindling troupe of soldiers and trappers with a few secrets of their own.

On one hand, this entry has the least humor of the bunch.  On the other hand, when Ginger responds to a tense and ominous dinner where simmering rage and racial, sexual & religious bigotry are on full display with "These people are fucked," it's clear that they're not taking themselves TOO seriously.

With a forest full of werewolves, an absent supply shipment and an atmosphere thick with paranoia and superstition, the Fitzgerald girls find themselves walking a precarious path between threats.  The only person who doesn't seem to be completely out of his mind is the native hunter, who just might be able to help them find some answers... if they don't all get killed first.

Ginger Snaps Back plays heavily on the threatening group dynamic.  Every interaction tugs threads of fear, tension and mistrust.  Additionally, it features the most outright carnage, closing things out with a bang.  Less is made of the sexual themes, unless you count the suspicions of the puritanical preacher (the type for whom everything is subtextually sexual) toward the girls.

If The Beginning had actually been the first film released, I doubt that Ginger Snaps would have become the kind of modest phenomenon that it did, but it's a sufficient excuse for getting the band back together one last time, and it's a dark little frontier adventure that metes out tension and a growing sense of fear from start to finish.

What It Feels Like for a Girl (Part 1)

 

So far, most of these movies have followed the Wolf Man tradition and dealt with male werewolves.  Today I'm going to look at a pair of radically different films that place women in the the fore.  The werewolf mythos has made much of the theme of male aggression in the past, but these both recontextualize the tales in uniquely feminine perspectives.

FILM:


In The Company of Wolves - 1984
Written by Neil Jordan & Angela Carter
Directed by Neil Jordan

I have to apologize right off the bat for the inadequacy of my ability to discuss In The Company of Wolves in as thoughtful a manner as it deserves.  I'm going to need to see it at least once more before I really get a grasp on just what the hell is going on here.  The film plays on more than one level and is dense with symbolism.  I can't imagine that that's all meant to be clear before one can approach it with the perspective of having seen the complete story arc, given the revelations involved.

Director Neil Jordan is still most often referenced with The Crying Game, but looking at the body of his work reveals a strong and recurring attraction to the supernatural and the imagination, which, of course, are facets of the same gem.  He's made films about vampires, ghosts, selkies (something of a were-seal in Irish legend) and here, werewolves.  Themes of transformation are also recurrent in his work, whether the mystical or the gender related.  Probably the most frequent element of all in his films is the consideration of sexuality, particularly its role in identity.  In this, Jordan's second film, all of those aspects of his directorial tastes are on full display.

This is also the second of at least nine times that Jordan has used Stephen Rea, who has done at least three werewolf movies in his career.  I don't really have a point here.  I just find it interesting in a trivial way.

The majority of the movie takes place in a young adolescent girl's dream, building up to a distinctly original reinterpretation of Little Red Riding Hood.  Now I, for a long time, have been considering the psychological, symbolic and sexual connotations of the LRRH story, but whatever I'd considered, it's clear to me now that Angela Carter had been there, written a thesis about it, then moved on to even larger considerations and implications.

Within the dream, Rosaleen's sister has been devoured by wolves; an inherent risk for "straying off the path."  Following this event, her grandmother shares with her various tales of the dangers of wolves (often while knitting for her the red shawl that she will come to wear proudly in a world of muted tones).  Over the arc of the narrative, Rosaleen goes from meek child to budding young woman, and the appeal of straying off the path grows, and the lure of wolves becomes more seductive.  Obvious parallels to sexuality are only the beginning.  There's almost certainly something about independence and identity in there too.

None of this is to suggest that you need to watch the film as part of a women's studies curriculum, mind you.  I'm sure it's perfectly possible to enjoy the movie at face value and chalk up recurrent symbols to the fingerprints of cinematic auteurism.  Visually, In the Company of Wolves is lush and beautiful, filled with stimulating imagery that needn't have meaning to be enticing.  A bird's nest filled with eggs that reveal baby figurines inside can simply be strange and surreal without symbolizing fertility, which is merely a guess on my part.

As for the werewolves, Jordan approaches them from both ends of the spectrum.  On the one hand, we have a lot of just plain wolves running around in places, although the wolves are being played by Belgian Shepherds here.  On the other hand, we have some pretty disturbing and explicit werewolf transformations, particularly the one involving Stephen's Rea's character.  The effects aren't quite as high-end as American Werewolf's or even The Howling's, although I found it to be better thought out and even more unnerving than the latter.

It's never really a distinctly scary movie, but Jordan creates such a compellingly surreal atmosphere that conveys an appropriate sensation of dreaming.  There are different kind of dreams, and some of them convey a growing sense of undefined danger and dread as they go through their paces, visiting both seductive and unnerving imagery as they lure us in.  That's the kind of dream that Jordan and Carter craft for us here.  While the overarching narrative isn't necessarily the most compelling story when taken at face value, In the Company of Wolves is a completely unique werewolf movie with more than its share of moments and ideas all wrapped in gorgeousness, which more than earns the repeated viewings it's going to take to really digest it.

Ginger Snaps - 2000
Written by Karen Walton & John Fawcett
Directed by John Fawcett

The makers of Ginger Snaps have some female oriented observations about the werewolf mythos as well, although they approach them much differently.  Key to its development is the observation that both adolescent girl and werewolves are subject to a bloody "monthly curse."

Ginger and Brigette Fitzgerald are morbid pair of Canadian sisters.  At 16 and 15 (respectively) neither one of them have yet gotten their monthly friend, a fact which is of considerable concern to their busybody mother who listens more to parenting manuals than she does to her daughters.  Between their over-engaged mother and their disengaged father, they have made a pact with each other than they will either get the hell out of Nowheresville, Ontario ASAP, or come to a drastic end trying.  In a school filled with hollow mundanity, their escape and identity is rooted in their outsider status.  Ginger is the smart-mouthed and aggressive one who balks at attention from boys.  Brigette is the silently plotting brains of the team who not-so-secretly covet Ginger's strength.  Their roles and relationships to their family, school, classmates and each other are summed up neatly with a class photo project in which they depict themselves in a variety of possible suicide scenarios.

At the precise moment when Ginger first gets her period, one night in the park, she is attacked by some sort of feral beast that drags her into the woods.  Brigette helps her to flee, and the beast is hit by a van driven by the local dope dealer.  Previously inseparable, the changes that these events trigger in Ginger will become a growing wedge between them, in a way not dissimilar to the changes that all adolescents experience.  Except this one goes to eleven.

Suddenly Ginger becomes dramatically hormonal, sprouting hair where she never had it before (never mind that it's coarse and grey, growing from the bite marks on her shoulder) and the attention of boys is more than welcome.  Brigette, meanwhile, is desperate to both save her sister from the condition about which she has growing suspicions, and to keep Ginger from leaving her behind.

Getting right to the point; Ginger Snaps is my favorite werewolf movie, period (no pun intended).  Ginger and Brigette are strongly developed characters that would be enjoyable to watch no matter what the story vehicle.  I would watch them in any variation on the high school movie, whether or not there was a monster involved.  This is due not merely to the writing, but to the powerful performances from the film's two lead actresses; Katharine Isabelle (Ginger) and Emily Perkins (Brigette).

The first time I saw Ginger Snaps, I declared (to an empty room, but still out loud), "Oh THAT girl's gonna be a star" in reference to Isabelle.  Nevermind that she's beautiful.  She exudes the same kind of magnetic "cool to hang out with" appeal that has worked so successfully for Jennifer Lawrence.  Months after watching the Ginger Snaps films (more on that later), I was watching a movie called American Mary, and without realizing that I was watching the same actress, I declared to the empty room, "Oh SHE needs to get famous," only to realize once I jumped online that it was Katharine Isabelle again.  Purely in the interest of science, let me be clear, I had not made this declaration at any point in between, and I don't run around making it about every pretty face I see.  Isabelle plays Ginger with enthusiasm, making her antisocial behavior all the more appealing.  The humor and personality with which she fills Ginger overflows in such way that you realize it's bigger than the role.  She's certainly a working actress, but Hollywood hasn't yet given her the vehicle that would really put her into orbit.

Absolutely none of this raving is intended to take anything away from Emily Perkins.  It's certainly Ginger that steals the show, but it's Brigette that carries it.  While Isabelle is tasked with the slow-motion explosion of an adolescent girl coming unhinged as she turns into a werewolf, Perkins is the one that has to hold it all together while Brigette feels her world falling apart.  She really becomes the lone protagonist and draws us close to see how she has to become her own person in the face of this cataclysm.  The role calls for range, and Perkins delivers it.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is Mimi Rogers as the girls' mother.  Several of the most laugh-out-loud hilarious moments come from her highly satirized portrayal of suburban parenting.  When the girls end up with too much blood on their hands (literally), Mom steps up with a plan to rescue them.  She's just a mom that cares, you guys!

The third act is a high tension race against tragedy, and it's here that Perkins is most clearly called upon to carry the film.  Once Ginger fully transforms, it's Brigette that we connect with and root for.  This does, however, bring up one of the less satisfying aspect of the film.  The final werewolf isn't all that we might have hoped for.  I'm not faulting the director for choosing to go the practical effects route, but the final wolf form looks kind of diseased and mutanty with wispy hair and wet, soggy flesh like a drowned and bloated molerat.  I'd be more concerned about it touching me than biting me.  Fortunately, the film isn't reliant on giving the werewolf a lot of screen time.

My only other complaint is a selfish one.  The funny parts are so funny and the sisters so personally appealing that I wanted more.  The blessing there is that Ginger Snaps attained enough cultish success to inspire a duet of sequels.  For more about those, come back tomorrow!

New Moon Rising

FILM:

Wer - 2013
Written by William Brent Bell & Matthew Peterman
Directed by William Brent Bell


Wer is a completely fresh and au courant take on the werewolf legend, updating the concept in the most significant way that I have seen in a generation.  I don't expect it to redefine the sub-genre, but it certainly breathes fresh life into the idea.

What starts out as a mystery and legal thriller eventually turns into an all-out action/horror piece in the second half.  It's not exactly a found footage film, but it does rely heavily on footage from video cameras, police cameras, security cameras and such, combined with psuedo-documentary shooting (like, say, The Office, though never acknowledging the camera) for the meat of the storytelling.  The news reports and found footage cut into the film provide a sense of verisimilitude that sells the idea that this is a more realistic approach to the concept in our modern context.

The film opens with vacation video of an American family in France, out enjoying a campfire in a field by moonlight -- full moonlight.  Something stirs in the trees.  Bad things happen.  Very bad things.  Cut to news reports about the attack. and the capture of the suspect, then hospital footage of the surviving family member talking to the police.  Whoever it was, whatever it was, was hairy and had these teeth...

Taking the case on behalf of the defendant is a French-American lawyer with the civil rights commission, Kate Moore.  Kate very aggressively challenges the French police who are all too willing to treat their suspect as though he's already been convicted.  He is, after all, a giant of a man, extraordinarily hairy, socially isolated, lives conveniently close to the crime and... Eastern European.

Kate and her team (one of whom happens to be a former lover) press the authorities to come up with some physical evidence linking their client, Talan Gwynek to the crime as evidence carries much more weight than testimony in the French legal system, and so far the police have none.  DNA analyses repeatedly come back as tainted.  The deeper they look into Talan's story, the more convinced they become that he suffers from a genetic condition called porphyria; an actual disorder that can cause bone deformities, skin problems (including excess hair growth) and receding gums (which would make the teeth look abnormally large).  In other words, all the things that have made Talan an outcast, but also something that would make him too weak to commit the kind of carnage of which he is accused.

I'm going to pause here for a moment to discuss a situation in horror movies that try to inhabit our skeptical world while still being monster movies in the end.  Characters spend the first act or two doubting and denying that vampires or zombies or ghosts or werewolves could possibly exist, and on the face of it, we find this acceptable because that's what we imagine we'd do in that situation.  The snag in this situation is that we as viewers already know that there's going to be a vampire of zombie or ghost or werewolf, or we wouldn't have bothered to watch the movie in the first place.  As such, the amount of time spent in denial can become increasingly frustrating to us as viewers.

I bring this up because, while I could play along and keep up the sense of mystery, we all know that there's going to be a werewolf in this werewolf movie.  So, although Wer does an excellent job of treating Talan's various conditions as scientifically explainable and logically believable to the characters, someone's throat has got to get torn out sooner or later.

Someone's throat indeed; and once it does, the chase is on.  Wer makes extraordinarily clever use of its lower-budget CGI effects.  We don't get a transformation as complex as American Werewolf's or Professor Lupin's, but the subtler werewolf is befitting the film's more believable world's tone.  There's one specific moment where the narrative turns for both the characters as well as the viewers, and the simple effect used there creates a jarring sense that we (and by "we" I particularly mean "they," the characters) are dealing with an entirely new situation that outstrips expectations.

Meanwhile, throughout the story, two subplots have been building that will develop into Wer's final confrontation and its final twist.  The twist at the end isn't a jump-out-and-grab-you one, but it does change some of the film's meaning.  It's a rare treat that a horror film's final twist is actually supported by the narrative and not merely tacked on for "gotcha" value, so the film scores a full point for that alone (were this a scoring game).

I almost didn't watch Wer, because the whole defense attorney angle didn't really sound that appealing to me, but I found it to be a tremendously refreshing take on the mythos, and I'm encouraged to know that the old dog can still hunt.