Werewolves Within Parent Guide

Beaverfield is a quiet, remote, town – or, at least it was until Sam Parker (Wayne Duvall) came to town to get local approval for an oil pipeline planned to run through the community. So when the new Forest Ranger, Finn (Sam Richardson) arrives, it’s to a community split in two by the upcoming referendum. Thankfully, he has the helpful postal employee Cecily (Milana Vayntrub) to show him around, which involves a memorable introduction to the heavily armed and deeply secluded local trapper Emerson Flint (Glenn Fleshler). But soon after Finn’s arrival, things in town start to go badly wrong. A dog is missing, a dead body is found under the hotel porch, and the power generators are sabotaged just as a massive blizzard sweeps into town. With the roads closed and everyone holed up in the hotel until the storm dies down, there’s bound to be trouble. And trouble doesn’t take long to arrive…

Horror comedies have a pretty thin line to toe in terms of tone. They can easily be too gross, too scary, or too funny, in addition to all of the usual problems that plague films. The solution most of them arrive at is to be stylized and quirky, which takes the edge off of the horror aspects and lets them play around with the comedy a little more. That’s what happens here.

It’s not a bad solution, either. Once you get sucked into the typical small town insanity of Beaverfield, the locals’ responses to the mounting body count can be entertaining. It definitely helps if you’ve spent some time in a small town yourself, but if you haven’t, don’t feel like I’m pressuring you. It’s weird out there, man. There’s a reason those towns stay small, and it’s not high rent.

As far as content goes, Werewolves Within falls on the mild side of the horror movie splatter scale. The violence sounds worse than it is, as most of it happens off-screen or out of focus without too much gruesome detail. The biggest issue is likely to be, as usual, the profanity – although even that is lower than it could have been. Finn, the protagonist, has a very Ned Flanders vibe about him, and is more likely to drop an “Oh heavens!” than an f-bomb, which I can’t say for the rest of the townsfolk. Sadly, the bad language keeps this flick from clearing the bar for a scary family movie night, but fans of horror comedies or quirky films generally might have a good time with the deranged denizens of Beaverfield.