No./7 The werewolf horror-comedy you need to know about
The director of lo-fi whodunnit WEREWOLVES WITHIN on his buzzy breakout film
WEREWOLVES WITHIN STARTED life as a 2016 video game, in which players had to root out the werewolf among them. Now it’s a cult-in-themaking murder-mystery comedy, which sees an ensemble (led by Veep’s Sam Richardson) in a small town forced to figure out who the monster killer is. The film has already got people buzzing ahead of its Tribeca Film Festival premiere; here, director Josh Ruben explains how he crafted what could be, potentially, the weirdest film of the year.
LOCATION IS EVERYTHING
Like John Carpenter’s The Thing, Werewolves Within throws a bunch of hotheads into a snowy locale and lets the monster terrorise them, one-by-one. “It’s pretty much between two or three locations,” explains Ruben. “[But] the anchor location is the lodge. It’s got these high ceilings and wood panelling. The lodge is a character in and of itself.” The small town, a rural community in upstate New York, was familiar to the director from his childhood. “We shot on the same streets that I used to run up and down shooting at my friends with cap guns, pretending to be monster-hunting,” Ruben says. But the location is more than just personal: it provides a key tension in the film, between not-in-my-back-yard-ers and gentrifying newcomers. “I understand the small-town dynamic,” he says. “It’s the people who don’t want it to change, and the people who are moving to these small towns in droves, going, ‘Why isn’t it like Brooklyn?’”
THE MONSTERS ARE EVERYWHERE
In this town, werewolves aren’t the only thing to be scared of. “I don’t think there’s anything kind of scarier than people,” says Ruben. “You know, I think I’d take my chances with the creature from Bad Moon, any day.” As suspicions grow and frictions rise, the body-count begins to rise, even without help from the monster. “Without hitting the nail too heavy on the head, I think that’s the theme of the film, really — it’s about the monster within all of us.”
MAINTAINING THE MYSTERY
The screenplay, by the appropriately named Mishna Wolff, saves the big reveal for later than you might think. “Mishna kept pulling back the slingshot,” says Ruben. Part of his job, he says, was to ensure that each member of the cast could, plausibly, be considered the ultimate villain. “As the director, you’re the barometer of the film — you want to make sure that no-one is taking anything too far, but you do want everyone to have their Agatha Christie moment.” Reactions to the film so far have seen plenty of rugs pulled from underneath viewers. “It seems like people couldn’t figure out who it was. So I’m thrilled. If it was obvious from the jump, we wouldn’t have the movie.” The answer, he hopes, may surprise you.
WEREWOLVES WITHIN IS ON DIGITAL AND DVD FROM 19 JULY