The Wolf of Snow Hollow

This movie billed itself as a horror comedy. I watched the trailer and it did pique my curiosity so I decided lets give it a whirl and I was a little bit excited about this one actually. It’s got Riki from the delightful comedy folk duo “Garfunkel and Oates” in a somewhat more serious role for her. It’s also got an aged Robert Forester. This may have been his last role, I’m not sure. I just noted the “In Memory” dedication at the end of the film and drew some natural conclusions. Jim Cummings wrote, directed, and starred in this film. I had to double check as I thought perhaps this was the legendary voice actor who supplied such iconic voices as Winnie the Pooh, Darkwing Duck, and Peter Pete of Goof Troop. This is a different Jim Cummings, just the same name. Wanted to clear that one up for you in case you had an expectation. Outside of that, nobody jumped off the screen as notable actors. What was nice about this film was while it definitely seemed very independent and very low budget, it still had a real quality production value that I think has been a nice shift in that world. With the evolution of technology combined with the accessibility of said tech, even the most low budget filmmaking can actually look pretty decent. Now that’s not to say that this whole movie was made with just an iPhone. Tangent here, I do always enjoy when they brag about a film being made on an iPhone like it’s just somebody out in a parking lot shooting a movie with their phone. True, it’s the filming element central to the actual action. But in most cases, it’s augmented with a number of peripherals that genuinely enhance the entire experience. So there IS a difference for sure. But this film has a very nice, professional sort of aesthetic to it that really comes through. Before I go much further, especially since I just looked it up, I would like to note that the budget for the film was still a cool $2M. Not that this is a super inflated budget. But it also wasn’t some rogue, homemade film either. As I mentioned, there are a couple truly known actors in it so it’s just a lower budget independent movie.

The other thing I think I have to say that I really enjoyed in this movie was that there felt like they really brought some quality mystique to the werewolf element of the film. The trailer, heck, even the poster and name for the movie lean towards at least a wolf being in the movie. So I’m not giving anything away. Quite purposefully, I might add. They were deliberate in showing you just enough intrigue around the wolf to keep you guessing. I liked that quite a bit. They were practical, much like “Werewolves” but in a less in your face kind of way. A lot of that is strategic in both avoiding expensive CGI costs as well as providing an air of mystery around the supernatural element of the whodunit experience. This is not just visually present, there’s an ebb and flow of the theory of something otherworldly at play in a series of gruesome murders happening in Snow Hollow. There’s real tension and the pressure of a town that is both angered and grieving through loss, as well as terrified of what is out there hunting down the citizens of this sleepy little town when the moon is full. Could it be the likes of a half man, half wolf creature who stalks the townsfolk? Is it someone mimicking this nightmarish beast of olden lore? Whatever it is, the bodies are piling up and the police are struggling to figure out what is happening.

Ok, so I think that’s enough praise for the good things this movie did. On a final positive note, just because I don’t think I have a full paragraph for it, Riki Lindhome as Officer Julia is quite delightful. She’s grounded and competent in her job. She’s also very professional but well known and well liked in the community. She seems like a hub for the things that really go well in this movie and her performance is deserving of considerable praise in this vehicle. Well, maybe I did have enough for a short paragraph. I don’t want to get into the bad stuff on the heels of praising her. So we’ll start that fresh.

This really is where the negatives come into play. This movie feels like it never really figured out exactly what it wanted to be. The horror elements are done well and the comedy, at times, is really quite palatable. But they don’t intersect well. Additionally, I think there are scenes that are meant to be comedic but they come out just a big jumbled mess of people shouting things. At times it sort of feels like scenes were written by a teenager who just found out about swearing and wanted to use it quite a bit without really making it fit well in reasonable dialogue. Other times the over the top delivery is just cringey and weird like it was clearly a choice to present the scene the way it was but not a good one. Or an informed one. Or a meaningful one. In the end, this really left me wanting. Not like I’d been given a taste and they just hadn’t satisfied my appetite, but more along the lines like they teased that they were going to do something that they didn’t really ever begin to actually deliver on in the end. So it’s like going to a restaurant that serves really good food and you can see that from looking at all the other tables. But after 90 minutes of being hungry for said fare, you’re escorted out of the building still quite hungry.

I really wanted to like this movie. The trailer made me think that it was going to be legitimately scary at times without going too over the top but it would be balanced nicely with some humor injected at strategic moments. This, to me, can really enhance a horror movie significantly. Many “scary” movies will still lull you into a false sense of security through humor. Some do it through banal goings on that sabotage the tone by boring you into submission to more than likely jump scare you back into the fright element of a movie. This is the wrong way to do it. Adding in humor, especially humor that is relatable or that actually makes you laugh, really switches the gears in your mind and drives that fear response back a bit. In a standard horror, you can really build your scares or drive the tension very subtly if you weave in a reasonable amount of humor into the dialogue. Many times, I’m well prepared for whatever terror inducing mechanism they’re going to present because the scene has casually forced me into the scope of this scare and I’m simply bracing for when it is unleashed. Many of those fall flat, especially if its just meant to startle. I rarely consider a startle a scare. You can be startled by a can falling off a high shelf. We might SAY we were scared by it. But we were just startled. I make the distinction simply because startling is an automatic response by the body to stimuli. Scaring someone is an emotional response to something meaningfully directed at eliciting that feeling. A well placed, and very intentionally crafted jump scare will still count in my book. I don’t throw the baby out with the bath water on jump scares. It’s just a tool that is overused consistently by lesser filmmakers who have no real means to actually scare you with tone, music, dialogue and tension they’ve skillfully crafted through a well made narrative, gifted enough actors and scenery that sets a tone. Simply allowing a zombie to jump out from behind a closet door is not a scare. Why was a zombie hiding in a closet? That doesn’t make any sense. Well because it was just meant to jump out at you and manufacture the same neurochemical response as being actually scared.

This movie feels like it tries to shoehorn comedy into a halfway conceived idea that got typed out into a script and put to film. That’s the disappointing part. Sometimes the jokes land. Most of the time it’s just outlandish behavior. If you’re watching something that’s meant to be a spectacle, over the top behavior is just fine. There’s a big difference between Batman Returns and Batman Forever because one is meant to have a tone and the other is a spectacle. The problem is your expectation was set for one and delivered the other. By the time that spectacle is doubled down on in Batman and Robin, you are no longer interested in what is being presented anymore. That’s what this movie suffers from ultimately. The spectacle of what is intended to be comedy overwhelms the scenes it’s present in and a great deal of it is attributed to Jim Cummings character of the sheriff. Knowing that he wrote and directed the movie as well, I really do hold him solely responsible for my disappointment in how this movie came together, or really didn’t actually, at it’s conclusion. His character is all over the place. He’s cartoonish with most people he actually interacts with and flies off the handle at the drop of a hat. He seems to always be consumed by stress so you just get to a point where you’re trying to understand why he put himself into the middle of all this. I don’t think it’s residual stress from the weight of his many roles. I think he designed the character to be that vulnerable to stress yet does nothing about it really. He’s a recovering alcoholic who has been sober for years but when things even begin to get troublesome he starts drinking again without any restraint or attempt at something resembling it. He’s brash with his staff and a generally horrible boss most of the time. He talks to most people like a moody teenager. It seems like he’s trying to present some kind of emotional struggle in the character that feels aimed at creating layers of depth of some sort but he just really comes across like an ass. This is also where he seems to try and derive much of the comedy. If he can insult people similarly to a Deadpool like character then it will be funny, right? Maybe. But you have none of the charm, charisma, or delivery of dialogue that is much cheaper and less interesting intrinsically. So whatever the motivation for this whole vehicle, it falls flat long before it even has a chance to be a thing, of which it never is.

The end of the movie just sort of happens. I don’t want to give anything away because despite my criticisms of it, and it being a bit confusing to try and unpack in the end, I did still enjoy myself for the most part. Maybe it’s just because comparatively I’ve dealt with such rubbish in many instances and actually wanted to like this one from the onset that I’m still showing it any love. I don’t know. There is still the skeleton of a plot and it’s not without some merit. Riki Lindhome doesn’t just shine because everyone else is trash. She does a great job and the payoff for her dedication is worthwhile. The effects are good and many scenes the supporting cast does really carry the film when Jim Cummings is simply trying far too much to make the scene something it never ends up being. His layers are superficial and you don’t ever really feel for him because everything he does is such a choice. You can’t rally behind him because if you were just a person living in this town he’d probably chew your head off for looking at him funny when you didn’t even do it. So you never even want to root for him. The rest of the staff isn’t much more competent outside of Lindhome but their bumbling nature is a little more relaxed in it’s humor so it’s far more enjoyable to interact with. Robert Forester, who isn’t in the film much, does add an extra, albeit thin, layer of integrity to the film. So when you ball up all the things this movie actually does well, even stacked against the definitive missteps, I feel like the overall score eeks out slightly above middle of the road. I can’t in good conscience give it a 6. But I will give it a 5.5. I’m probably still being a measure too generous with it but I don’t want to put it in the same category of the other films I’ve given scores in the 4’s on this list. It is better than those. Maybe I should square it closer to just a 5 but when I put that score down at 5.5 I feel ok with it and my gut has been pretty much determining scores so far so I’m not going to mess with the recipe as is.

In the end, I would recommend this movie but with a number of caveats that would probably rope in a smaller than average crowd. Sure, anyone looking for a horror movie they haven’t seen could probably sit through this one and enjoy it. But in the back of my mind, I have Werewolves Within on the mind and it’s a much better movie. WW was everything this movie wanted to be but with maybe a little more dependence on the humor. Sam Richardson is a MUCH funnier and far more likable sheriff in a very similar position with a movie that came out relatively close to this one. If I had to point you in the direction of a werewolf movie that was a horror comedy, Werewolves Within is the one I would recommend. So that makes it hard to really endorse Snow Hollow above that one. BUT if you had already seen the Sam Richardson movie and wanted something new, I’d tell you to check out Snow Hollow. I would let you know to temper your expectations but it’s still an ok watch. In understanding how niche that crowd is already going to be for the full endorsement of this movie, somebody just looking for a good time with low expectations could probably just as easily watch this flick and get a little something out of it in the end. So it’s probably in my top 5 werewolf movies, understanding there’s probably not 5 werewolf movies I really like. But with that being said, I think we’ve done all we can with The Wolf of Snow Hollow for this one. So until next time, I’ll catch you on the flip side.