By JENN ADAMS
Starring Mark Nocent, Jake Raymond and Allan Dobrescu
Written and directed by Danny Dunlop
Black Mandala Entertainment
By now a veritable sea of ink has been spilled dissecting the boom in true crime entertainment. This thorny genre offers a complex blend of empowerment and toxicity, but it has also led to the rise of the internet sleuth and online investigative communities. These citizen detectives spend their spare time pouring over the records of unsolved murders or disappearances, hoping to find the missing links in cases the police may not have the resources to pursue. When we think of a true crime junkie, most of us imagine a young suburban mom or millennial introvert binging podcasts and lounging in sweatpants, but there’s another type of person drawn to this amateur detective work – those seeking to explore their own shadows by digging through the darkest corners of humanity. The lone wolves of the world, they hunt for killers to uncover their own insecurities and process the anxiety that keeps them from confidently engaging with the larger world.
Danny Dunlop’s WOLVES explores this search for connection through investigation. Mark Nocent plays an unnamed protagonist who finds himself captivated by a series of animal murders plaguing his snowy Canadian town. Isolated and alone, he struggles to find his identity and worries that if given enough time, his lonely existence might morph into a similar practice of murder and manipulation. These grisly deaths trigger a disturbing memory from his childhood that might hold the key to solving the string of crimes as well as his own social inadequacies. He becomes obsessed with these animal mutilations partly because he realizes that his life is on the verge of tipping into something darker. The film follows his struggle to identify what’s keeping him tethered to reality and how tenuous this connection has become.
Dunlop based the script on true events from his hometown of London, Ontario, in which a series of animals were found slaughtered throughout the city. He uses these crimes as the spark to tell a (perhaps) self-referential story about the kind of person who would dive head-first into this kind of gruesome misery. Dunlop centers the story on his unnamed protagonist and his solitary life. Caught up in petty crime, he begins the story as a sheep trying to harness the will to become a wolf. It’s no coincidence that we never learn his name. Nocent portrays this man as a blank slate, drifting from one interaction to the next like the snow drifting over the town. When he does connect with others, he easily slips into an assumed persona to disguise his lack of identity. Studying people from afar, he’s become adept at creating a narrative that will trick those around him into believing he is happy. It’s this talent for deception that seems to disturb him the most, as he realizes he’s likely using similar tactics as the killer he’s pursuing. As the man slowly closes in on his target, he realizes along with the audience that the wolf he’s been seeking all along is the one hiding within himself.
WOLVES takes place in the breathtaking iciness of winter and the snowy scenes only heighten the film’s themes of isolation. Like the real snow filling the frames, this silent chill perfectly amplifies a story about a man living on the fringes of the world. The film is gorgeous, but this contemplative pacing often has the effect of staring out a window and watching snow accumulate. It is stunning, but it’s also somewhat underwhelming. The story unfolds at a glacial pace, and we spend long scenes simply following the man as he wanders around the wintery town. His awkward demeanor further slows down the plot, and the horror comes from watching him grit his teeth and try not to unravel. If we allow ourselves to absorb the uneasy atmosphere, we begin to wonder how close we might be to unraveling as well. However, this experiential viewing requires a great deal of patience. For most of its 103-minute runtime, WOLVES feels almost egregiously slow. The story builds to a somewhat shocking climax but never delivers on the gruesome horror implied by the subject of the man’s investigations. Those not watching in theaters may well turn the film off once the halfway mark hits with little to nothing having happened in the story.
Despite this pacing, WOLVES offers plenty to chew on. The story may not deliver much by way of traditional scares, but its themes linger long past the muted but empowering conclusion. Dunlop’s strength lies in taking the time to explore the experience of loneliness and the terror of trying to find your identity in a world filled with darkness. The title may imply vicious monsters who tear flesh as they wander through the wintry forest, but Dunlop’s film has much more to do with the two wolves said to live inside each of us. This is a story of an interior battle between the creatures inside Nocent’s protagonist – the wolf who hides and the wolf who hunts. It’s a struggle most of us can relate to if we’re willing to take the time to let the hunt play out.
