Daily Halloween: Night 8

I declare In the Company of Wolves to be a great movie. It’s a dreamlike dark fairy tale with its own logic (dream logic, I guess). It has werewolves in the strictest sense but it’s not a werewolf film, or even really a horror film. Based on a short story by Angela Carter, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Neil Jordan, it brings the subtext of Little Red Riding Hood (sex and predatory men) to text. But Carter and Jordan turn the story on its ear – they empower Rosaleen, the red-hooded heroine, and aren’t entirely clear about the wolves’ nature.

Most of the film is set in a shadowy forest of mossy, gnarled trees and giant mushrooms; lizards, frogs, snakes, and birds are tucked into almost every scene. The setting and the man-to-wolf transformations work not because they’re believable or realistic (they’re not) but because they fit the uncanny world. It has stories within a dream within a story, and, though the logic of the real world doesn’t apply to any of it, the story coheres.

Sarah Patterson, who was only about 13 when the film was shot, delivers a good performance as Rosaleen and I’m surprised she didn’t go on to do more. The rest of the cast is also very good: Angela Lansbury plays Granny, David Warner plays Rosaleen’s father, and Stephen Rea and Terence Stamp make short appearances.

This was a nice change of pace, and my favorite of the new films I’ve watched this month.

Everyday Halloween...Day One

October has arrived. The leaves fall from the trees, the nights grow long, and Halloween approaches. Every year around this time I watch a slew of horror films; I watch them all year, to be truthful, but I really ramp up around Halloween – ghost stories and monster movies and an occasional slasher flick. This year I’m starting early and I plan to stretch it out a bit. It's cool in my house and I'm under a blanket with the dog at my side, so it’s a good time to begin.

Tonight I watched Neil Marshall’s 2002 Dog Soldiers. I’d seen it before, a few years back, but I wanted to revisit it because I've come to really appreciate Marshall's films since then. This is his first, three years before he made the The Descent, one of my favorites and a film I watch every few months. Centurion is good as well, a fun comic bookish film. 

Dog Soldiers is, of course, a werewolf film. Lycanthropes don’t get much appreciation, being less romantic than vampires and less of an easy vehicle for social commentary (like mindless consumerism) and modern anxieties (like pandemics) than zombies. Still, there are some gems in the genre. I love John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London, and you should, too. It’s funny and scary and has likable characters, both dead and alive. And it has Jenny Agutter, who is charming and really should have been in way more movies. I really like Joe Dante’s The Howling as well. Both are 1981 movies. Ginger Snaps, a nice twist on the dangerous trappings of burgeoning teenage sexuality (most horror is metaphor, right?), is another good one.

Dog Soldiers is a strong debut. The roots of Marshall's atmospheric style show in the shadowy woods and craggy hollows. It certainly has enough gore, and the monster effects work well enough, though I like them better during the dimly lit early scenes. He makes good use of his budget – instead of a full werewolf transformation we get instead a few Lon Chaneyesque drop-out-of-frame-and-emerge-as-a-monster scenes, which I kind of like, and lots of hairy, taloned arms punching through windows. A solid cast, especially Kevin McKidd (Rome) and Liam Cunningham (Game of Thrones) deliver good performances. There's a lot of wit and the dialogue is natural. So it’s fun and it has some genuine tension, especially early on. A good start to the season.