OUT COME THE WOLVES - Mark Reviews Movies

Out Come the Wolves, IFC Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 29, 2024

As the title promises, the wolves do come out in director Adam MacDonald's movie—both metaphorically and literally. That dichotomy is where Out Come the Wolves stumbles, as the opening scenes suggest an exploration of the more vicious side of human nature, only for all of that to disappear in favor of the visceral terror of being hunted by a pack of natural predators.

To be clear, the movie is genuinely frightening and unsettling when the actual wolves do appear, because MacDonald refuses to shy away from what these beasts can do to an unsuspecting person and even to those prepared for the presence and imminent threat of wild animals. Then again, there's likely nothing that can prepare one for the sight of a hungry wolf defending its meal only a few yards away, let alone a wolf rushing in your direction or an entire pack of them encircling you.

That's what the characters here learn or realize several times over the course of Enuka Okuma's screenplay, which is far more intriguing about how these characters find themselves in these situations and what they do when confronted by such an obvious threat to themselves and those near them. The human drama, in other words, holds more promise, unfortunately unfulfilled by the end, than the survival thriller the movie becomes.

The premise is simple. Sophie (Missy Peregrym) and Nolan (Damon Runyan) have been dating for about a year, and as in love as they appear to be, the couple couldn't have more different backgrounds and interests. He's the editor-in-chief at a magazine, currently publishing a series of articles meant to make people reconsider the things we take for granted.

Nolan has assigned himself the basic concept of food, especially from animals. He's not a hunter and, indeed, has never really considered hunting, but the angle for his piece is the hypocrisy of eating animals without even contemplating the idea of killing one.

Sophie, though, is—or, at least, was—an avid hunter, who learned from her father, who learned from his father before him. Recently, she has become a vegan, after having an epiphany on her last hunting trip, so to teach and show Nolan what hunting is really like, Sophie has enlisted the aid of her best friend since childhood, who still hunts, like Sophie used to, with a bow and arrow.

The friend is Kyle (Joris Jarsky), a rugged and generally quiet man, who still lives in the remote forested region where he and Sophie grew up together. This is the first time Nolan and Kyle are meeting, and it initially seems that the two men want to impress each other, since they both love Sophie—presumably in different ways, of course. Nolan tries his best to shoot a bow and, later, a rifle, and Kyle is patient and maybe a bit too congratulatory of the newbie's unsuccessful efforts.

Before the men's hunting trip starts and the entire story shifts gears into survival mode, Okuma starts picking at surface of these characters and their relationships. What's revealed about them should be pretty obvious, since Nolan expresses discomfort about Kyle showing up on his own (He was supposed to bring a girlfriend, but they broke up beforehand) and the degree of attention, as well as affection, the friend shows toward Sophie. The two men drink a bit too much the night before the trip out to the woods, and Nolan lays out his misgivings, his jealousy, and his suspicions of Kyle, whose looks at Sophie might be worth some amount of all of that.

The human conflict is grounded, believable, and uncomfortable, and it defines everything that happens once the two men find themselves alone in the forest. Each man still wants to impress the other, but the tone of their actions becomes harsher, more competitive, and filled with resentment.

This doesn't last for long, though, because a wolf shows up, followed by more of them, and as distressingly violent as the result is, Okuma and MacDonald seem to still have the human conflict at the forefront of their tale. Someone here makes a decision, out of fear or because of all those dark feelings or both, and now, the suspense isn't in what the wolves might do but what the repercussions of that choice will be.

None of that plays out or pays off, however, and soon enough, we're simply watching as some number of these characters start searching for answers and/or trying to survive the sudden appearance of a pack of wolves. There's a good amount to appreciate about the performances from the three actors, with Jarsky and Runyan playing flip sides of the same coin of male ego confronting different kinds of cowardice. Meanwhile, Peregrym's apparent plot device of a character reveals a degree of no-nonsense action-taking that's quite appreciated, even if it is only in service of the straightforward thriller the story becomes.

There's less to admire, though, in the series of chases and fights this story, which seems so keen of and about its characters until a certain point, becomes. In that later mode, Out Come the Wolves does possess a primal level of terror. Given the threat and the horrific depictions of these attacks, how could it not? The problem is that this new focus feels superficial compared to the threats of human frailty and flaws posed by the setup.

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