[Film Review] Wolf Garden (2023)

Please note-spoilers ahead!

Marketed as An American Werewolf In London (1981) meets Vertigo (1958), Wolf Garden sees William hiding out in a remote and isolated country house, his psyche beginning to crumble as he struggles to contain the terrible secret hidden in the garden shed.

Directed by Wayne David, who also stars as the central character of William, Wolf Garden is, as the title indicates, a werewolf film that constantly switches between past and present, dream and reality. One such time flip suggests that William and his partner Chantelle (Sian Altman) have encountered a terrifying and bloody attack whilst spending time in the countryside, an experience that has caused William to end up alone as a possible fugitive. William begins to suffer from nightmares as well as a distorted view of reality, imagining scenarios with the now missing Chantelle, as well as being bothered by a mysterious man known as simply The Visitor (Grant Masters), all the while William also routinely cuts up meat to feed a growling beast that seems to be locked up in the shed in the back garden. 

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Werewolf centric movies seem to currently be having somewhat of a resurgence in cinema with releases such as Werewolves Within (2021), Wolf Manor (2022), Wolfkin (2022) as well as Marvel’s Werewolf By Night (2022) hitting screens. Whereas the majority of lycanthropic movies tend to focus on the transformation scenes and visions of the wolf in all its snarling full moon glory, Wolf Garden involves surprisingly very little actual werewolf, instead focusing on William’s mental state surrounding a situation which is very obvious from early on in the film due to a slightly overdrawn narrative. The constant shifting from past to present, as well as dream state and waking can be tiring at times, presenting as a slightly worn out technique by the time the film kicks into its more straightforward conclusion.  

The bare bones of Wolf Garden shows promise, there are hints of a discussion of mental illness, a theme which could have been fully fleshed out using the allegory of the werewolf and their inevitable fate but this seems to have been glossed over and pushed to the wayside. Due to the majority of the 89 minute running time being taken up by flashbacks and confusing time lapses, the characters of William and Chantelle and their relationship is never really given much of a chance to develop to a point where an audience would care for them or their circumstances.

Grant Masters as The Visitor is enigmatic and a nod to John Landis’ An American Werewolf In London, providing a haunting vision of William’s conscience and is the strength behind the last ten minutes of Wolf Garden. The key to a successful werewolf film, especially when the werewolf as a cinematic movie monster is so drastically underused, is to describe the wolf as a metaphor. Whether its xenophobia and antisemitism in An American Werewolf In London, the female experience in Ginger Snaps (2000) or power and sexuality as in Joe Dante’s The Howling (1981), the werewolf is a symbol for a vast array of the human experience, and unfortunately this is where Wolf Garden misses the mark, void of a clear subject matter. There is an interesting story somewhere in Wolf Garden but lacks any real bite. 

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