Out Come the Wolves
It’s not the reunion and wilderness adventure weekend Sophie has planned out at the cabin with Kyle, a close friend since childhood when her own family stepped up when his own tapped out, she looking forward to meeting his girlfriend and introducing him to her boyfriend Nolan, a journalist working on an assignment of challenging himself on the theme of food.
Wanting to learn how to hunt and be self-sufficient, unlike him Kyle and Sophie are both experienced with gun and bow but she prefers Kyle to take the lead, allowing the boys to get to know each other, but with Kyle’s girlfriend unable to join them the dynamic is already unbalanced, two men trying to stake their claim on the same territory despite Sophie having made it clear where she stands and that she is not theirs to fight over.
A three-hander shot in the dense forests of Canada, accessible only by dirt bike, steadfast against the encroachment of civilisation with few paths and certainly with no cell reception, Reaper’s Missy Peregrym, Star Trek: Discovery’s Damon Runyan and Wynonna Earp’s Joris Jarsky are headstrong Sophie, intellectualising Nolan and Kyle, accustomed to keeping his own company and counsel, making trouble for themselves and allowing egos and tempers to flare in Out Come the Wolves.
Directed by Pyewacket’s Adam MacDonald from Enuka Okuma’s script with contributions to the story from both MacDonald and Jarsky, the isolated setting and the dynamic of the three disparate characters vying for dominance and advantage make the first act uncomfortable but demanding viewing, the history of Kyle and Sophie making Nolan feel like the usurper who bolsters himself with generous tumblers of spirits but only undermines his claim to the moral high ground with inappropriate comments.
Nolan may share Sophie’s bed but the forest is Kyle’s domain, any tentative bond between the two formed over blood and apologies crumbling when Nolan stumbles on the hunt, confirming that he is a dabbler whose actions don’t match his words, the intersection of their lives a happenstance rather than meaningful and not something which can be depended on when the crisis follows almost immediately, the title of the film literal than symbolic.
Their unusual aggression towards humans driven by the needs of the plot rather than more typical behaviour, the wolves trained by handler Sally Jo Sousa and her team are undeniably magnificent, but with the tortured triangle of love, lust, rage and resentment split as the trio take individual paths through the forest Out Come the Wolves becomes less a tense character drama than an unremarkable survival horror, more interesting when it was the humans biting at each other than wild animals.
Out Come the Wolves will be available on Shudder from Friday 29th November
