Adam Macdonald’s Out Come The Wolves is a fun survival thriller with solid performances that shines best in its quieter moments.
Director: Adam MacDonald
Genre: Survival Thriller
Run Time: 87′
US & Canada Release: August 30, 2024
UK Release: TBA
Where to watch: in theaters & VOD
Out Come The Wolves is an interesting film to review because, while it falls victim to some of the usual stumbles I’ve come to expect from thrillers like these, I found myself surprisingly engrossed in what it had to say and show outside of its core survival premise. Wolves are a scary enough concept to craft some decent thrills around, but it can be challenging to keep them as a threat without going all in on the supernatural.
Out Come The Wolves doesn’t quite go in the direction of An American Werewolf in London, but it is a particularly grizzly affair that, rather shockingly, works best in its quieter moments.
Out Come The Wolves follows Sophie (Missy Peregrym, of Evil), a young woman spending time in a secluded cabin with her fiancé, Nolan (Damon Runyan, of Star Trek: Discovery), who is writing an article about hunting. While Sophie did hunt back in her youth, she has now turned over a new leaf with a vegan diet and a distaste for the grizzly act. Needing someone to accompany Nolan, Sophie invites her best friend, Kyle (Joris Jarsky, of God’s Country), to join them at their cabin and help her fiancé with his article. When Nolan and Kyle head out to hunt together, however, things quickly go wrong when a pack of wolves brutally attacks them.
Out Come The Wolves is a movie that’s essentially split into two, with the first half resembling a chamber piece surrounding our three characters and their troubles. Sophie has a strong friendship with Kyle, but with her engagement to Nolan and the fact that the two slept together as teenagers, a certain tension is now beginning to bubble up. Now, I’m usually the type to roll my eyes when movies like these attempt to place their character drama so much in the forefront. For most audiences, a survival thriller lives and dies on its tense setpieces rather than its quiet character moments. However, the strongest element here is easily the dramatic core within its script, thanks to the strong trio of performances.
What’s especially strong here is the film’s understanding that these characters should ultimately be multi-faceted people with genuine ideas and perspectives of who they are and what they should do, even if it leads to them not being as likeable. In the first half, Adam Macdonald primarily focuses on the “how and why” of these characters, understanding who they are, what they do, why they do it and what happens if things do not go their way. It’s an unusual move for a movie like this mainly because it turns the core premise into background noise that’s largely irrelevant until the second half truly begins. It’s a move that could’ve easily destroyed a lot of the pacing here, but Macdonald thankfully keeps things moving with a tight 85-minute runtime with credits.
The second half of Out Come The Wolves is where the core premise truly comes into play. With the slow build-up, Adam Macdonald and screenwriter Enuka Okuma provide weight behind everyone’s actions to the point of creating some very tense set pieces early on. The wolves, when we eventually see them, are legitimately threatening, with our characters stopping dead in their tracks when caught in its line of sight. A frustrating element that creeps up early on, however, is the use of shaky cam when those wolves finally do attack. While there’s certainly a place for much more chaotic camera movement, it’s particularly nauseating here, and it frankly threatens to remove the bite out of the film’s harsher moments.
There’s actually some surprisingly visceral gore sprinkled in throughout, but when you have a camera deliberately shaking violently to ensure you miss some of the finer details, it can be hard to see what you’re supposed to be looking at.
Many core issues with Out Come The Wolves primarily come from its more narratively simplistic second half and its focus exclusively on the intense survival thriller conventions. These moments are finely crafted and can be fierce, but when the first half focuses on a much more human story, it can lead to the film feeling somewhat narratively misshaped and needing another couple of drafts. Adam Macdonald and Enuka Okuma’s decision to focus on these characters and their troubles as much as they do here was a wise one because it makes the movie stand out from the many others like it. When it does pivot to the traditional survival thriller you’d come to expect, it does so in a way that’s not particularly offensive, but it still falls somewhat short of its own potential.
Out Come The Wolves isn’t a particularly revolutionary movie, but thanks to its very strong performances and craft, it still manages to be a fun and occasionally intense thriller. The second half sacrifices some of the braver choices that the first takes, but all in all, what’s here is a very sturdy and economical piece of filmmaking that still exceeds many others like it being released right now on VOD or in cinemas.
Out Come The Wolves was released in theaters and on VOD in the US and Canada from August 30, 2024.
