The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020)
Jim Cummings writes, directs and stars in this is-it-or-isn’t-it-a werewolf flick which functions as a thoroughly engaging and often quite funny meditation on anger, addiction, self-control, and self-forgiveness. Also, Riki Lindhome has a significant and mostly non-comic role, and I’m always happy to see either member of Garfunkle and Oats show up in a movie.
The setting is the Alaskan town of Snow Hollow, a small ski-tourism based community where not much of note ever really happens. Thus, the police force is totally unprepared when a series of grisly murders begin wherein mostly women are attacked by what seems to be some kind of beast, but one which is apparently not hungry, as while they’ve been mutilated, other than one or two precisely removed organs, nothing seems to have been ‘consumed.’
Cummins’s John Marshal is the son of the sheriff (who is on the verge of retirement and has a serious heart condition which keeps him out of the action) who takes lead on this investigation. John is a deeply unlikable guy—mean, rude, short tempered, convinced that he’s surrounded by idiots, but also not doing a great job himself. Over the course of the film, he falls off the wagon, having previously been sober for some time, further estranges his ex-wife and his daughter, and though he does actually resolve the werewolf problem by then end, he also demonstrates how unready he is for any kind of leadership position. Metaphorically, he is the true werewolf of the film—filled with a rage he tries and fails to control, and is still struggling with until the very end.
This was a great and really interesting genre-defying film. It made me laugh more than anything else in quite a while, but it also elicited a few tears. And it was successfully a bit scary and gory. Not fitting into any one schema, it was entirely itself. Bravo.