By SHAWN MACOMBER

Boasting a cast that includes Frank Grillo (from a pair of PURGE and CAPTAIN AMERICA movies, among others), Katrina Law (ARROW, NCIS) and ’80s cultural icon Lou Diamond Phillips, an intermingled palette of influences (DOG SOLDIERS, GINGER SNAPS, THE HOWLING) and a devotion to practical effects that will feel like a welcome hit of potent wolfsbane to digitally disgruntled genre fans, Briarcliff Entertainment’s WEREWOLVES is one of the best lycanthropic cinema experiences in many moons.

Tracing the bloodline of this feral film–which envisions a near-future in which a supermoon transforms a billion or so human beings into howling beasts–isn’t simply a matter of simply checking old almanacs to see when last the autumn moon was bright, however. No, we must follow the fur back much further, all the way to a childhood sleepover attended by its future director Steven C. Miller, who received a visit from the Ghost of Shapeshifter Future in the form of one Gary Busey.

“I was really traumatized, in the best way, by SILVER BULLET,” Miller confesses to RUE MORGUE. “I saw it for the first time in the basement of my friend’s house and just remember thinking, ‘Holy shit—this is wild.’ It’s such a cool little movie. I think it’s Corey Haim’s best performance, to be honest. And you get Gary Busey at the right kind of Gary Busey moment. After that, I went back and watched all the old classic werewolf movies, and just fell completely in love with ’em. I’ve wanted to do a werewolf movie basically since I started making movies.”

And though it took years–during which Miller had dalliances with zombies (2006’s AUTOMATON TRANSFUSION), a very naughty Santa (2012’s SILENT NIGHT), Bruce Willis (2016’s MARAUDERS) and killer AI (2022’s MARGAUX)–when the WEREWOLVES script by Matthew Kennedy (INHERITANCE) landed in his lap, he knew the perfect lunar path had finally opened up. As WEREWOLVES tears into theaters nationwide, RUE MORGUE queried Miller on his transformative influences, balancing heart and soul with action and monsters, the pandemic effect on lycanthropy and how on-set practical effects brought him back to his ’80s coming of age and had him feeling like a kid in a very bloody candy store.

WEREWOLVES feels a bit like the DAY OF THE DEAD of werewolf movies. This cataclysm has occurred previous to the events of the film and now, while regular people go about the task of adapting to this new normal, there is an almost delusional audacity among the authorities, who seem to believe they can impose the old societal structures and methods of control onto a problem like the world’s population turning into werewolves on a regular basis. That feels like a cool, provocative approach to this subgenre–especially in the wake of the pandemic.   

What’s interesting is I actually got the script before the pandemic. We went into lockdown just as we were gaining steam to get it made, and I was just sitting there during all that craziness looking at this script and thinking, “Man, this hits home even more than it did before.” I mean, the movie has this outbreak that forces people into their homes and a hunt for a cure or a vaccine, right? We even went back and revised the script to lean into the similarities even more, to make it hit that much closer to home–only with werewolves in the mix.

The sequence where everyone is werewolf-proofing their houses and taking all these new precautions definitely felt more real watching it now than it would’ve pre-pandemic. It speaks to the adaptability of humanity; over the course of a year, what would’ve been theoretically insane previously becomes semi-routine.

Right. I just connect with those gear-up moments in movies where characters prepare–where they know something’s going to happen and they do what they have to do to be ready in the best way they know how. You learn a lot about different characters in those scenes—how they think, how they react. I’ve always loved that way in and found it effective, so I definitely wanted to infuse WEREWOLVES with that.

WEREWOLVES is a horror film, but it has a number of expertly executed action sequences. Was it difficult to work on those parallel tracks and keep them in sync?

Yeah, and this stuff can be difficult when you’re just shooting guys in suits. On WEREWOLVES I was dealing with guys in suits, and creatures, and rain, and… It was a challenge to get everything right. Luckily, I went through an action-movie bootcamp in the 2010s—I just did so much of it—that it’s sort of second nature to me now. So I had the bandwidth to concentrate on, how do I get these werewolves to look cool during these sequences? For me, making sure I did justice to the werewolves that [effects creators] Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr. and their guys created was super-important to me.

The werewolves do look amazing. You can tell right away that this was a production that respected the monster’s cinematic history, which has incorporated the most practical of practical effects. It’s clear that was important to you.

We were prepping the wolves for months and months before we even got to preproduction on the movie—just going through different designs, asking questions like, Will the designs have elongated arms? Will the actors be on stilts? How can we have suits that fit well but allow the creatures to move and run the way we want them to? We went through all these different variations because whatever we needed to do with the werewolves, I wanted to do without green CGI screens all over the place. I knew we would have to do some of that, but I didn’t want it there if the wolves were on screen. I didn’t really want to touch them after the fact, you know? And I’m proud to say that every wolf you see on screen, that’s a practical werewolf. That is how we shot it. There’s no touchup, no cleaning them up in post. I was adamant about that.

That care and consideration makes such a huge difference.

It was a process, but it was a fun process. As an ’80s kid who grew up on this stuff and loves werewolves, I felt like a kid in a candy shop seeing these guys build these creatures and the puppeteers and actors bring them to life. It was surreal in the best way. I was having so much fun that any kind of problems or issues that came up just trying to make them look good or work could not bring me down. It was just a blast.

You nailed the action and horror elements so fully, the film probably could’ve skated a bit on story. But it doesn’t. The family elements are affecting, and seem to be taken as seriously as any other aspect of the movie.

Well, I have a family, so I didn’t want to lose that part of the story—even if finding a balance took time. I mean, there’s probably a half hour or more that got cut because ultimately, people did want more werewolves. So I’m thankful that what we were able to keep in really works. It’s important, in my opinion; you don’t want to go so far that the pacing gets bogged down or audiences get bored, but people definitely need to care about the characters and relate to them if you’re going to make something that has any meaning for the audience. We also have a lot of strong female characters taking charge and blasting werewolves, which was important to me as well.

You also have Lou Diamond Phillips, who is a living legend.

I love Lou. Lou is amazing–and not just because he’s a great actor and a gracious collaborator and brings both gravitas and, because he’s such an ’80s staple, a sense of nostalgia to the movie. He’s also a great director, so it was cool to have him walk me through his own ideas, which were very interesting and made the movie better. I just had a lot of fun with Lou.

He’s also worked with werewolves before, on the early-2000s series WOLF LAKE.

[Laughs] Yeah, he understands their process.

Can you talk about any other touchstones?

We watched a lot of DOG SOLDIERS. Such a great movie. THE HOWLING is something we watched. The FRIGHT NIGHT sequence with Evil Ed’s transformation from wolf back to human is gross, and something I looked to for inspiration. AMERICAN WERWOLF IN LONDON is just such a classic. I also looked to GINGER SNAPS for a different, amazing take on how werewolves could look and behave.

No spoilers, but there’s definitely one transformation that is a beautiful nod to GINGER SNAPS. I could also see the underloved third film, GINGER SNAPS BACK: THE BEGINNING, as an influence because, like your movie, it sets a werewolf story in a fully realized world and very different context from what we’re used to seeing.

Yeah, I love films that approach genre a little differently and put a fun spin on it. GINGER SNAPS did that better than most.

You’ve done a lot of world-building in WEREWOLVES. Do you hope to revisit this world?

We’ll have to see. But yeah, Frank [Grillo] and I have talked about it a lot. I have stories for the next two that I would be really excited to flesh out, so hopefully the movie does well enough to warrant that. It could go a lot of interesting places, so fingers crossed.

It does seem like potentially a zeitgeist moment for werewolves. Early next year, Leigh Whannell’s WOLF MAN hits theaters, and shortly after that, Universal Studios opens the new Dark Universe park in which the classic Wolf Man is a featured presence.

Yeah, I definitely feel like they’re having a comeback. I’m stoked for WOLF MAN. I’d love to see our film help pave the way for more werewolf movies in some small way. And ultimately, Universal owns this movie, so it’s cool that we’re in that mix at this time.

WEREWOLVES would actually make a great Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights haunted house. Just saying!

[Laughs] I agree! And I’ve already thrown that out there to them. We’ll just have to see how it goes.

WEREWOLVES is now playing in theaters; visit www.werewolvesmovie.com for venues and tickets.