Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Wolf’ on VOD, in Which George MacKay is a Boy Who Cries Because He’s a Wolf Inside

Now on VOD, Wolf pairs on-the-cuspers George MacKay (1917) and Lily-Rose Depp (Voyagers) for (checks IMDb description) “a high-concept arthouse drama about a boy who believes he is a wolf.” How could you resist that? The core idea is “species dysphoria,” a thing that exists in real life, but one that’s not recognized by science as a legit psychological condition – so I think writer/director Natalie Biancheri may be creating some allegory here. Now let’s see if the movie pulls down its prey, or just howls pointlessly at the moon.

WOLF: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Jacob (MacKay) runs around naked on all fours in the forest, sniffing things and rolling on his back like a dog who just found something that smells tantalizingly HORRIBLE and really needs to bring some fresh garbage/raccoon shit/rotting detritus whiff into the house. His parents take him to a fancy in-patient facility for people like him, and I don’t want to say it’s a cuckoo’s nest because that’s probably insensitive, but then again, if a person thinks they’re an actual cuckoo, that’s where they go.

The patients gather for group therapy, and it goes like this: “Hi, I’m Jeremy, and I am not a squirrel.” And he isn’t, but on the inside, he may be jonesing hard for some acorns. Jacob isn’t quite as flamboyant as some of the others: Rufus (Fionn O’Shea), who thinks he’s a German Shepherd, is ever-eager to please the staff, and dare I say he’s obedient? Another, the girl who believes she’s a parrot (Lola Petticrew), wears a coat of colorful features and a beak mask, and repeats phrases that are spoken to her. Everyone keeps diaries and plays iPad video games where you line up a wild animal in a scope and fire away like a good big-brained biped. The place is run by a man without a name (not even “Dr.” something) who’s referred to in the credits as The Zookeeper (Paddy Considine). Will you be shocked to learn that his treatments are unorthodox, and perhaps quite cruel? No, you probably won’t.

Jacob is a quiet, sensitive type who mostly keeps to himself and doesn’t act out until he awakens in the middle of the night and starts yowling and snuffling. He pads around the place on all fours at midnight and meets The Woman Known in the Credits Only as Wildcat (Depp), and he sniffs her butt but doesn’t chase her up a tree. Wildcat doesn’t fall in with the patient ranks, and has been at the facility so long, she falls into the cracks, like the antisocial pet cat who mostly stays in the basement and only sort of likes one person in the family. Will it take dogs and cats working together in order to lead a patient revolt and/or an escape? NO SPOILERS, lest the dogcatcher snare me with his net.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Biancheri melds One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with a Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster) vibe, slightly scenting the affair with Ari Aster and a werewolf movie or two.

Performance Worth Watching: This is a fairly subdued, tonally shaky film where the cast doesn’t ever, if you’ll pardon the phrase, get off the leash – except Eileen Walsh, who’s slyly funny as a dastardly orderly (therapist? nurse?) who does her damnedest EVERYTHING IS FINE to keep the inmates dancing to “Gloria” despite the group being disrupted by the sounds of torture coming from an adjacent room.

Memorable Dialogue: The Zookeeper isn’t against firing off a few cliches: “Be careful, Jacob. When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into you.”

Sex and Skin: Butts and boobs; a sexy scene of interspecies petting where whatever is going on happens out of frame.

Our Take: It’s not too much of a stretch to say Wolf draws parallels to the experiences of many transsexuals, but it doesn’t do any favors to those struggling with gender dysphoria. That isn’t to say the film is disrespectful or tasteless; the loathsome Zookeeper and his minions exact some nasty conversion-therapy techniques, and eventually outright torture, upon their patients, enough so to raise our ire, and to show the film’s sympathetic heart. But dramatically, it’s thin and vaguely involving, an emotional non-starter that sets up a simplistic inmates-vs.-the-wardens plot, weaves in a vanilla love story and works its way to the finish line. The patients are repressed and abused, the caretakers are cruel, and you know how this type of story goes.

Biancheri creates a sort of insular, subtly surrealist reality where characters are known only by their archetypes (The Zookeeper, Wildcat, etc.), suggesting a warped fairy tale or parable, but she does nothing with it – or its eyebrow-raising psychosexual implications, which could use a good dramatic aphrodisiac. It’s as if Biancheri aimed for understated and landed at timid. For a while, we wonder where exactly this thing is going, and are driven by curiosity to see how it might play out. But it lands on a singularly nondescript conclusion offering very little in terms of catharsis, or even the provocative, puzzling qualities of the typical arthouse-horror Ambiguous Ending. It doesn’t generate much momentum or suspense, and sure seems to take itself way too seriously. Anyone hoping for a good WTF watch will be disappointed by its arch blandness.

Our Call: SKIP IT. For a movie about people letting out their inner animals, be they large bears or diminutive tree rodents, Wolf is remarkably dull.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.