Bullet Points: Wolf (2019)

One of the most perfect films ever made is Predator. I have no doubt in my mind about that. So an easy outline to follow if you’re intent on making a film of your own is to place a group of elite soldiers in a foreign environment while they are hunted by some sort of mysterious creature. By that logic, Wolf should be the second greatest film ever made. Let’s find out.

Synopsis: A group of elite Roman soldiers are tasked with finding four missing men north of Hadrian’s Wall who went missing while carrying a message to the King of the Picts. Instead of finding the men, however, they find that a new and terrifying threat awaits them.

• A boy and his dog: The film opens with a young boy and his dog out for a play in the fields along the forest. The dog runs into the trees, makes some deathly noises, and then when the boy follows he is mauled by some sort of creature. An introduction that could have been done better but one that at least gives us an opportunity for some bloodshed early on.
• Meet the Romans: We meet the 10 person team of Roman soldiers who are sent north of Hadrian’s Wall to find the missing men. They are lead by Domitius (George McCluskey) but what was most striking to me about the squad was that there were multiple women. One being a former slave and another being a black woman. I could be wrong (and I’m not in need of serious historical accuracy in a movie like this) but I don’t believe black women served in Caesar’s legions back in those days. The rest of the men are nothing special. Director Stuart Brennan plays Grackus and he and his Germanic buddy were probably the biggest standouts with the best lines in the film.

• Ambush: We do eventually get to see some combat as the troops are ambushed by a tribe of Picts. It isn’t much of a fight as the Romans make short work of the “savages” and move along. At least it was something….
• The beast attacks: Talk, talk, talk. That’s pretty much all we get about the beast in this. The more we hear about the beast the less we see. In fact, the beast would have had to look insane as hell for me to have accepted it by the end since I just went through 80 minutes of various stories about these things killing people. The first attacks are cut quickly and we never get to see even a single frame of the things. A cop out, for sure.

• The landscape: I would have preferred to see more B-roll footage of the landscape that they are forced to cover. The few times it shows the frozen ground and the rivers running it felt like it really worked to add to the toughness of their journey back to the wall. Give me more of these scenes to reinforce how bad that landscape can be.
• The blind guy: In so many movies like this, the soldiers or the survivors are forced to get information from someone who is familiar with what is going on. Wolf is no different. They come across a blind guy who tells them about some farmer’s son who was bitten and turned into one of the beasts. They also find out that silver could potentially kill the things.

• Stand and fight: I waited what seemed like forever for this film to show me the beasts. They were not good. It was essentially just some shirtless dudes with halloween store fangs in their mouths. I thought for sure there would be one mega werewolf that would emerge and do the most serious amount of killing but even that was too much to ask for. Instead we’re just teased with some action that we never get to see.

The Verdict: Wolf had real promise with its simple premise and ability to just splice together the Predator storyline, Roman occupation of Britannia, and werewolves into one story. It even spends some time figuring out who each of the characters are within the story. The sad part of Wolf is that it never spends any time making sure to make a scary beast or to even give us a good glimpse into how beast-like they are. All I saw was a shirtless hipster with long teeth. Not scary at all. The landscape could have helped make it seem less survivable if used properly but much like the creatures, it failed to live up to my hopes. Wolf isn’t a movie that I would recommend. There are better places to put your money. I did see that it had a 5/10 on imdb but I couldn’t find a single review that gave it more than a 3. Funny, huh?