WEREWOLVES WITHIN
YEAR 2021 / CERT 15 / RUNTIME 97 MINS / DIRECTOR JOSH RUBEN
Sometimes the best videogame adaptations come from the least likely sources. While you may not have heard of either the game or the movie until now, Werewolves Within is a (very) loose adaptation of Ubisoft’s PSVR party game of the same name that sees players trying to find a murderous imposter among the group.
The game’s medieval setting, with its witches and folklore, is tossed aside and replaced with a snow-swept American small town, filled with suspicion and tension as an outsider attempts to convince its residents to greenlight a new fossil fuel pipeline. While the concept of the original game is mostly brushed away, the core idea remains: a hidden werewolf is hungry for blood and on the loose.
MOON GLOW
What makes a good whodunnit? A great cast. Forced together in this dangerous situation is a group of unlikely allies, between whom disagreements would be brewing
“THE FILM EXUDES CONFIDENCE, STRIKING A BALANCE BETWEEN LAUGHS AND SHOCK AND GORE.”
even if lives (and the environment) weren’t on the line. You have the older conservatives looking for new money from a gas pipe, a millionaire gay couple who moved for the
scenery and don’t want it destroyed, a hotel owner whose husband left her… They would be at each other’s throats (*ahem*) with or without the threat of a werewolf.
It’s an audacious concept, but the film exudes confidence, striking a balance between laughs and the occasional moment of shock and gore thanks to sharp editing and dialogue that keeps the movie flowing once the action begins. While it’s far from perfect (a lot of time is spent on setting up when it would have been better spent on the mystery), the writer manages to adapt game mechanics into a great premise on which a B-movie sendup can flourish. As far as adaptations go, there’s not a lot to dig into – but perhaps that’s why it’s so successful on its own terms.