It’s really hard not to open this by mentioning that, yeah, Werewolves Within is the best video game movie ever made. It feels unfair to do so. Video game adaptations have a long and stories history of being really fucking bad, after all. It is, at best, damning a genuinely good film with the very faintest of praise.
Make no mistake: Werewolves Within is a good movie. Honestly, it’s a downright delightful movie. Werewolves Within has more in common with Edgar Wright’s beloved “Cornetto Trilogy” than it does with Doom, thanks in large part to an exceptional cast and a surprisingly tight script.
“Yeah, you’re going to fit right in here at Beaverfield.”
Finn (Sam Richardson) is a forest ranger. That’s about all he has going for him. He’s on the outs with his (maybe ex-)girlfriend. He’s been professionally disgraced. And he’s resorted to listening to male empowerment CDs on his drive to his new posting: Beaverfield, Vermont.
Beaverfield is a small town in crisis. Parker (Wayne Duvall) has come to town as a representative of a gas company hoping to build a pipeline through all this pristine nature. All he needs is for everyone on the town to sign on the dotted line. They get a big payout, and he gets to build his pipeline.
This offer has exacerbated the already-bursting divides in the town, between the rich, gay tech millionaires (Cheyenne Jackson and Harvey Guillén) who retired here for the nature and the striving small business tyrants (Michaela Watkins and Michael Chernus), among others. Things have reached a boiling point.
And that’s before something in the night eats Trisha’s puppy and a snowstorm strands the townsfolk together at a local inn. Before the bodies begin piling up. It turns out that someone may be picking off the townsfolk one by one. Is it for the pipeline? For the money? For revenge? Only Finn and his trusty local guide, mailwoman Cecily (Milana Vayntrub) can figure out who — or what — is lashing out in the dark of night.
“Everyone here is a little…”
Sam Richardson is one of the best comedic actors out there. As a co-creator and co-lead of Detroiters, one of the best sitcoms of the 2010s, he crafted a comic persona that simultaneously leaned into and lambasted his gentle handsomeness and multifaceted talents as a performer. He beautifully upended that in I Think You Should Leave, where his characters range from sweaty desperation (“Little Buff Boys”) to screaming action hero parody (“The Night Scrooge Saved Christmas”) and into a professional trying to hold a collapsing show together (“Baby of the Year”).
Here, he plays a bit of a nebbish, a variation on his Detroiters character. Sam plays Finn like a genuinely decent man, albeit one who has never really learned how to speak up for himself. He knows how to make the big, inspiring speech needed to calm the townsfolk down, if only for a moment — but only after trying, and failing, to speak up repeatedly before things reached that boiling point. He’s a kind man, a good man, but you get the impression that he lacks confidence. The movie bends on Finn’s
His foil here is Milana Vayntrub’s Cecily. Vayntrub is likely best known to viewers as Lily, the AT&T ad girl, though a recent leak revealed her lost look as Marvel’s most wholesome heroine, Squirrel Girl. Sam is playing the nebbishy outsider who needs to stop beating around the bush and stand up for himself. Milana is the wise-cracking people-person who knows everyones’ business and isn’t afraid to tease them about it. And Finn needs a lot of teasing, as we see from an early scene in which he interrupts a chance to kiss her to answer a call from his ex-girlfriend. Is Cecily the right woman? Or is she a killer?
Savvy viewers will pick up on most of the film’s twists early on. But it won’t matter. The casting here is simply impeccable. It’s impossible to single out a best supporting performance. Michaela Watkins’ flighty housewife with a dream dominates every scene she’s in. Rebecca Henderson’s dour, serious scientist has a hilariously strange pulp energy. Sarah Burns and George Basil as a bickering couple of trashy mechanics feel like they fell off the pages of A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear and onto the screen, authentic comic lunatics. The cast here is small, but everyone is perfect.
“… questionable.”
Werewolves Within is slight, sure. While it consciously mimics some of the style of Edgar Wright’s horror-comedies, it lacks the sheer density of visual gags in Wright’s best films. And yet, seeing a mainstream American comedy that’s so thoughtfully paced and directed is heartwarming. Are we finally beyond the post-Apatow improvageddon? I sincerely hope so. More films like this, like Barb & Star Go To Vista del Mar, can only be a good thing.
But where Barb & Star went whole-hog into absurdity, Werewolves Within feels more character-driven. Beaverfield, for all that it’s far too small to make sense, feels real. Credit to writer Mishna Wolff for knowing the small touches that can make a character pop off the screen, like the little soap-bottle angels Trisha greets all newcomers to the town with and her husband’s handsy conservative masculinity that is immediately and elegantly presented. Small, muttered throwaway lines here can reveal so much about the characters. Wolff knows how to set up these characters as distinctive and memorable people.
And credit director Josh Ruben for knowing how to pace a gag. Finn walking onto the property of a libertarian loner, blithely ignoring a series of increasingly threatening signs as he tries desperately to get his ex-girlfriend on the phone was beautifully revealed, for instance. Ruben got his start making short comedy videos for CollegeHumor, and it’s clear that he learned how to execute basic set-up and payoff from doing videos rather than standup. He uses editing, costume design, the set — all of it plays a part in building a horror-comedy that you can sink comfortably into.
Which, honestly, is my only real criticism of the film. Werewolves Within doesn’t challenge you in any way. For some viewers, myself included, that’s totally fine! I like good meat-and-potatoes storytelling, and Ruben delivers that. But Werewolves Within is a gentle movie about the necessity of kindness in a cruel world. You might notice, that sits oddly next to a horror-comedy that kills much of its cast.
Still, there’s a place for comforting films. Werewolves Within belongs there. I can easily imagine turning this on deep into winter. This is a good movie to remind you when you’re trapped inside and it’s cold and you’re tired that, hey — you don’t have to be a dick. Be like Finn. Be a good neighbor.