You have to love horror movies that don’t take themselves seriously, yet still, deliver all the chills and thrills that one expects from this milieu. That is certainly the case with Josh Ruben’s Werewolves Within.
It’s not necessarily a comedy-horror flick but certainly shares some DNA with films such as Cabin in the Woods and Anna and the Apocalypse. They’re horror movies, through and through, but there’s a thread of comedic relief woven throughout that successfully keeps the horror raw, while implementing some comedy beats to lighten the load.
Mishna Wolff penned the script and smartly has our eyes and ears to this tiny, yet tight-knit, community arrive via the town’s new Ranger, Finn (Sam Richardson, Veep and We’re the Millers). He’s got his own baggage that he brings to this new job, and he cannot help but notice that everyone here is a tad on the unique side. From a character development point of view, a tip of the cap is in order to Wolff and director Ruben.
Finn arrives and lucky him, gets the town tour by mailwoman extraordinaire Cecily (Milana Vayntrub). There’s a quirkiness—and I hate using it because it’s so overused, but if there ever was a time for its use, it is defining Werewolves Within. It stems from Vayntrub and Richardson and reverberates throughout the entire ensemble.
Vayntrub is sensational. She says so much with so little—in terms of her use of her non-verbal cues. It recalls Lucille Ball if she landed in America in 2021 and in the midst of a supernatural attack involving a beast with serious teeth. Her strength lies in her subtlety of delivery. Whether at the beginnings of Werewolves Within when she’s showing the new Ranger around town or when that tension noose tightens as the bodies pile up and destruction permeates, Vayntrub’s Cecily has a pitch-perfect response for every situation, whether verbal or solely through an innate physical response.
Watching Cecily and Finn navigate this potential werewolf-infested small town is a joy. These two spark silliness amongst seriousness that one cannot teach or direct. You either have it or you don’t, and Vayntrub and Richardson have it in excess. There’s a romantic spark at the most or simply an electric connection between the two leads that is made more complicated by werewolves, locals arriving at inopportune times, and general bad timing. They’re hilarious together, but also vulnerable to fear because the deaths are real, the methods of killing are brutal, yet Werewolves Within never forgets to laugh at itself.
The film overall, and everyone in the ensemble, keenly knows what movie they’re making. Too often in the horror and genre films, someone somewhere in the cast misreads the writing on the wall and brings the entire thing down. Not the case here, director Ruben firmly has control of every frame of this thing. There’s vision and there’s what he delivers in this worthy addition to the werewolves world.
There’s “cast of characters” and then there’s Werewolves Within. Each individual brings their A-game and Wolff has crafted multi-layered souls who could each be asked to carry the movie if it was needed.
Adding to this searingly unique view on storytelling, the film is based on a PlayStation (among other tech giants) virtual reality video game from a half-decade prior. There’s your starting gate, and from there, the film narrative couldn’t be more malleable. There might be a werewolf on the loose, or maybe it’s just one of these terrifically three-dimensional souls that inhabit Within that will pierce your heart. Werewolves keeps you guessing, right up until the cinematic book on this small town is closed.
Grade: A-