Out Come the Wolves, A Horror Movie Review by Hope Madden
Three friends decide to spend the weekend hunting, but when they venture out of their cabin and into the woods, they soon become the hunted.
Release date: 30 August 2024 (Canada)
Director: Adam MacDonald
Out Come the Wolves
Predator and prey. Alpha and beta. Necessary and expendable. Writer/director Adam MacDonald puts these ideas into perspective with his latest thriller, Out Come the Wolves.
MacDonald returns to the woods, where he’s long wrought havoc (Pyewacket, Backcountry). In this forest, Sophie (MacDonald’s regular collaborator Missy Peregrym) is hoping her childhood best friend Kyle (Joris Jarsky) can teach her big city boyfriend Nolan (Damon Runyan) how to hunt.
Nolan’s a writer planning an article on the experience, but he’s also eager to meet Sophie’s dear friend to get acquainted and maybe gauge the competition.
MacDonald’s cinematic bread and butter has been the small cast, big woods, test of the survival instinct. In Backcountry it was a bear; in Pyewacket, a demon. The title here probably gives away the antagonist this go-round, but MacDonald has more in store for us than just a couple of hungry wolves.
Though small cast plus limited location generally equals low budget,
Out Come the Wolves boasts impressive production values. Interiors, though slightly hokey and sometimes obvious, develop tension with claustrophobic close ups. MacDonald also takes this first (mainly interior) act to set up the gender politics at work, something he plays off of well in the coming outdoor adventure.
Jarsky delivers the most believable performance, one fraught with roiling emotions and conflicting goals. Runyan is slightly hamstrung by the underwritten “big city guy” role, but he finds a nice balance between smug and vulnerable, insecure and earnest.
Peregrym’s third act makes her first act easier to stomach. She’s saddled early on with a bad dance scene and unrealistic levels of emotional ignorance. It’s not Peregrym’s fault—the writing team (MacDonal and Jarsky along with Enuka Okuma) unable to craft a realistic character is to blame. And Peregrym does what she can, but it’s not until the final third of Out Come the Wolves that she gets any opportunity to shine.
It’s still not a very convincing character, but the performance elevates the script.
Out Come the Wolves has some obvious ideas on its mind. It takes those ideas in tense, often interesting directions buoyed by Jarsky’s performance, in particular.
