Who was the villain in Werewolves Within?

Sam Richardson is a delight. He’s engaging as Richard T. Splett on Veep, cheerfully hoping for his father’s death so he can inherit the email address. He’s hilarious as a player on Tim Robinson’s much-memed sketch-comedy series I Think You Should Leave, yelling at babies and aiding Ebenezer Scrooge in a sci-fi spin on A Christmas Carol. And he’s charming as forest ranger Finn in the consistently funny, unevenly paced horror comedy Werewolves Within, which swaps out the medieval location of its video game origins in favor of a snowy small town (à la the cult classic Phantoms) and Trump-era humor about undesirables and Antifa.

Those latter elements age a film that at its best feels like a cross between the 1987 vampire film The Lost Boys and the 2002 and 2004 live-action Scooby-Doo films, and at its worst stumbles through one predictable character interaction after another. And for best and worst, it also feels like the game that spawned Ubisoft’s video game Werewolves Within: the classic social-deduction party game Werewolf, where a group of hapless villagers try to uncover the monster in their midst as it schemes to kill them off one by one.

Directed by Scare Me’s Josh Ruben, written by debuting screenwriter Mishna Wolff, and produced by Ubisoft Film & Television, Werewolves Within is set in the small mountain town of Beaverfield. It begins with an attack outside of the snow-covered, Overlook Hotel-evoking Beaverfield Inn. A man is knocked off his feet, slashed apart, and dragged into the woods. Nearly a month later, forest ranger Finn (Richardson) drives into town while listening to self-affirmation audiobooks that encourage him to stop “being nice for no reason,” and get more in touch with his masculine side. That’s a difficult ask for Finn, who is polite, accommodating, and mostly nonconfrontational. The only thing that really angers him is when people disrespect nature, so when he meets Midland Gas representative Mr. Parker (Wayne Duvall), he’s immediately distrustful.

Photo: Sabrina Lantos/IFC Films

Parker wants to buy out the entire town for a gas pipeline, and his only holdouts are Beaverfield Inn owner Jeanine (Catherine Curtin), whose husband recently left her, and married couple Devon (Cheyenne Jackson) and Joaquim (Harvey Guillén), whose liberal politics and tech-earned millions make them Parker’s enemies.

Beaverfield is full of eccentrics, and quirky, sarcastic mail carrier Cecily (Milana Vayntrub) — with whom Finn feels an immediate spark — offers to show him around. Each of Finn’s meet-and-greets follows a certain rhythm: The actors’ performances are over the top, whether accented, affected, or both, and Finn stammers and stutters through bemused pleasantries before moving onto the next. On the side of Midland Gas are mechanic Gwen (Sarah Burns), her husband Marcus (George Basil), full-on Karen Trisha Anderson (Michaela Watkins) and her handsy husband Pete (Michael Chernus), who own the town’s maple-syrup farm.

More unclear in terms of their alliances are off-the-grid survivalist Emerson Flint (Glenn Fleshler), who drapes himself in wolf pelts and decorates his home with all kinds of animal skeletons, and environmentalist Dr. Ellis (Rebecca Henderson), who barely leaves the inn room where she’s running an array of science experiments. She keeps unnerving everyone by silently popping up in the middle of other people’s conversations and creeping around corners.

The Beaverfield population is small, but a complicated tangle of grudges and petty grievances ties its inhabitants together. And when they converge on the inn because of a snowstorm that knocks out the town’s power, inexplicable things start to happen. Who, or what, killed and ate Trisha’s dog? Whose body does Finn find under the inn’s porch? What caused the giant gouging slashes in the generators around town? Can Finn “man up” and figure this all out? And did someone really just say the word “werewolf”?

In 2016, Werewolves Within put a networked spin on the familiar party game, just as Among Us did in 2018. Werewolves Within players join VR games, are assigned secret roles like “watcher,” “gossip,” and “deviant,” and have to deduce the identity of the werewolf. Winning in the video game involves either correctly identifying and killing the werewolf, or surviving as the werewolf. But in the movie version of Werewolves Within, the narrative is focused solely on the former option. The pacing is another frustrating difference between the two formats. While the video game is meant to move quickly, cycling through players as they defend themselves or attack others, Werewolves Within spends nearly an hour on all that village setup. That leaves only half an hour or so for the actual whodunnit and werewolf stuff, and in that compressed time frame, the film’s conclusion feels abrupt.

Before then, Werewolves Within relies a fair amount on suggestion and allusion, as well as its characters’ goofy antics and constant bickering. Just as he relied heavily on sound and suggestion in Scare Me, Ruben lets viewers hear echoing growls and heavy footsteps rather than seeing the figure responsible for them. He shows the townspeople’s horrified reactions to the mauled body Finn finds rather than seeing the corpse itself. Those are all routine B-movie elements, but Ruben and Wolff avoiding explicit creature-feature action certainty means the few scary moments successfully land.

Photo: Sabrina Lantos/IFC Films

The dialogue is less effective, though, mainly because Wolff dates it so thoroughly with an array of pop-culture details (Ace of Base, kombucha, Mr. Rogers) and obvious allusions to Trump’s America (“liberal snowflakes,” “lock her up”). Simply repeating references that audiences will recognize is not humor. And certain characters, in particular Dr. Ellis and Parker, are little more than poorly drawn nods to 1980s horror-movie tropes.

Werewolves Within (which would make a solid double-header with the 2019 Irish horror comedy Extra Ordinary) is at its best when it just lets Richardson flicker between the array of guileless reactions that have now become part of his comedic persona: a little naïve, a little befuddled, a little jolly, and finally, a little pissed off. He handles most of the comedic heavy lifting, with squinting disbelief at Trisha’s “Do you celebrate Kwanzaa?” during their first meeting, increasingly unnerved exclamations of “Heavens to Betsy!” as he tracks the werewolf’s path through town, and shock at his own use of the word “fuck.”

And during the film’s final moments, which put a spin on the horror’s final-girl cliches, Richardson’s agreeable acceptance of his own ignorance emphasizes the effectiveness of the film’s central “Who’s the werewolf?” mystery. Richardson’s task is to play off everyone else’s broadness, and his ease in doing so smooths over the rougher patches of Werewolves Within.

Werewolves Within opens in a limited theatrical run on June 25 and is available for digital rental on July 2.

Werewolves Within is the perfect summer movie, a funny whodunit to watch with your friends. This is the type of film to see in theaters if it's playing near you. After a werewolf attacks a small town, the community needs to come together to find the culprit before it’s too late. What follows is 90 minutes of hilarity and entertainment, resulting in horror-comedy gold and one of this year's best genre features.

Directed by Josh Ruben and written by Mishna Wolff, the film is based on a video game by Red Storm Entertainment. Nice guy Finn (Sam Richardson) moves to the small town of Beaverfield after reassignment as a forest ranger.  There, he meets a wild cast of characters, including the quirky and outspoken postal work, Cecily, played by Milana Vayntrub. Richardson and Vayntrub do a fine job in the lead roles and have natural chemistry together, including a few perfectly executed scenes that toy with their characters' attraction to each other, while Finn is still hung up on his ex.

The rest of the characters are less developed and serve as comedy or werewolf fodder. Yet, the film works so well because of the ensemble cast. There’s a gay couple out of place in the small town. There’s a reclusive hunter who threatens to shoot anyone who steps foot on his property. There’s a husband and wife who lose their dog to the big bad wolf, and there’s a menacing business tycoon, Sam (Wayne Duvall), who insists that the town bend to his will and allow him to build a pipeline. The divide over the pipeline is a clever subplot that adds tension to the story and shows how such an environmental issue can tear a small town apart and pit neighbor against neighbor. It’s also clear why some people who struggle financially wouldn’t mind some money in exchange for their land. This issue is handled well but never dominates the film. The town itself, meanwhile, becomes an intriguing character and location  unto itself, having fallen on hard times and desperate for economic resurgance and relevance. There's also a nice mix of exterior shots featuring heavily wooded areas to reinforce the sense of isolation and danger and interior locations with crackling fireplaces.

Werewolves Within isn’t a movie heavy on a political message. It’s a fun romp about a small town under attack. Anyone can be a suspect, and it’s unlikely that the viewer will guess who howls and transforms during the full moon. In fact, I was surprised by the last act once the werewolf was finally revealed. Ruben and Wolff do an excellent job keeping the identity of the lyncanthrope fully disclosed until the closing minutes, and there are plenty of red herrings to keep the audience guessing and diving down different rabbit holes. ​

Further, the film isn't heavy on long, drawn out action sequences and even though it’s a movie about a werewolf, it’s not very gory, either.  As mentioned, Vayntrub and Richardson really carry the film. Their characters have a lot of heart, especially Richardson's Finn. He’s a refreshing lead and an anti-action hero of sorts. He doesn't pack stockpiles of guns to hunt the werewolf. Instead, he cares about the small town and pleads with the neighbors to come together and be good to each other in order to solve the crime. I hope we see Richardson in more films because he’s the real highlight of this one. He’s the opposite of Sam, who wants to impose his will on everyone and force the pipeline, environmental consequences be damned. Sam makes for a good human villain in stark opposition to Finn's kumbaya mentality.

Werewolves Within is the perfect mix of comedy and frights with a cast that plays off each other well for laughs. It reaches a satisfying conclusion after a few well-scripted twists and turns. This is the perfect bit of escapism we can all use right now.

The film will release in theaters on June 25 and then VOD on July 2 through IFC Films.

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​Brian Fanelli fell in love with horror movies the first time he watched Night of the Living Dead as a kid. His writing on the genre has been published by Horror Homeroom, The Schuylkill Valley Journal, and Signal Horizon Magazine. He is also the author of two books of poems, Waiting for the Dead to Speak (NYQ Books), winner of the Devil's Kitchen Poetry Prize, and All That Remains (Unbound Content). His non-horror writing has been published in The Los Angeles Times, World Literature Today, Paterson Literary Review, Pedestal Magazine, and elsewhere. Brian has an M.F.A. from Wilkes University and a Ph.D. from Binghamton University. Currently, he teaches at Lackawanna College.