Monster Whodunit Werewolves Within Is a Side-Splitting Creature Feature
With the release of his feature film debut Scare Me last year, director Josh Ruben put himself on the horror-comedy map with his tale about horror writers telling scary stories. With Werewolves Within, Ruben further proves his skills as a director who knows how to walk that delicate line between horror and comedy, deftly moving between genres to create something that isn’t just scary, but genuinely hilarious. The cherry on top? This is a videogame adaptation.
Werewolves Within is based on the Ubisoft game of the same name where players try to determine who is the werewolf; Mafia but with shapeshifting lycanthropes. Unlike the game, which takes place in a medieval town, Ruben’s film instead takes place in the present day in the small town of Beaverfield. Forest ranger Finn (Sam Richardson) moves to Beaverfield on assignment after a gas pipeline has been proposed to run through the town. But as the snow starts to fall and the sun sets behind the trees, something big and hairy begins hunting the townsfolk. Trapped in the local bed and breakfast, it’s up to Finn and postal worker Cecily (Milana Vayntrub) to try to find out who is picking people off one by one. But as red herrings fly across the screen like a dolphin show at the local aquarium, it feels almost impossible. Just when you think you’ve guessed the killer, something completely uproots your theories.
It manages to be an amazing videogame adaptation because writer Mishna Wolff doesn’t try to make something faithful to the game’s contents, but rather takes inspiration from them—not unlike Paul W. S. Anderson’s Resident Evil films. Wolff takes the core idea (a hidden werewolf in a small town where everyone knows each other), and places it in an even more outlandish and contemporary context to pack an even funnier punch.
In bringing the film to the present rather than keeping it in the past, Wolff is able to write painfully relevant jokes about politics and stereotypes about conservatives versus liberals in small-town America. Comedy here comes primarily through this examination of stereotypical small town characters that also plays into a larger political message about the destruction of small town America, all packed into Wolff’s tight script. Within the impending changes of Beaverfield, the conservatives with their aggressive yard signs and very loud opinions shout and brandish weapons in the name of “freedom” and “protecting their own.” Liberal transplants, like the couple played by Cheyenne Jackson and Harvey Guillén, bring a much more privileged perspective, not thinking of the locals but about their quiet extended vacation being ruined by construction. Environmental destruction doesn’t take the forefront; instead each bizarre resident centers the problems on themselves, which only leads to their untimely (and bloody) deaths at the hands of something lurking in the shadows.
While the jokes never stop flowing in Werewolves Within, Ruben and Wolff never lose sight of the film’s horrific aspects through plenty of gore, tense scares and one hell of a climax. The remaining members of Beaverfield are jammed into the town’s bed and breakfast, believing there’s safety in numbers, especially since none of them seem to be the murderer. However, in a series of events akin to John Carpenter’s masterpiece The Thing, their one place of respite becomes a terrifying blood-filled hellhole as people are dragged from their beds and hands are ripped from bodies. Paranoia just keeps building and building which, paired with a lot of loaded guns, is a very dangerous situation even without a werewolf involved.
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