Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Michael Patrick Jann
Starring: Ethan Embry, Li Jun Li, Jeremie Harris, Lukas Jann, Beth Malone, Kevin Allison, Alexandra Doke,
Mather Zickel
Few things will cause an audience to toss their popcorn at the screen
quite like the realisation that a movie has been cheating us with some
unreliable narration. Alma & the Wolf is one such movie. Director Michael Patrick Jann and writer Abigail Miller are guilty of presenting us with scenes that draw us into the
film's mystery, only to make us question how those moments could have
actually played out when we're ultimately presented with a late twist of
the sub-Shyamalan variety.
It's a shame, as initially Alma & the Wolf appears to have a lot going for it. For a start it has a
wonderfully moody backdrop of rural Oregon, constantly cloaked in
overcast skies that give it the look of the English moors setting of
'The Hound of the Baskervilles'. That's apt, as the film concerns a
mystery around a hound of sorts terrorising the small town of Spiral
Creek.
Spiral Creek is a rather on the nose name as most of its inhabitants
seem to be on a downward trajectory. That's certainly the case for
Deputy Ren (Ethan Embry), who is trying his best to conceal his
alcoholism from those around him, but not doing a very good job of it.
One day while on patrol he comes across Alma (Li Jun Li), once
the most popular girl in his high school class and now a fellow dipso,
walking the side of the road covered in blood and clutching the remains
of her dog. Taking her back to the station, Ren listens as Alma spins an
unlikely tale of being surrounded by a herd of goats before a giant wolf
tore her own little good boy to shreds. Ren puts it down to the drink
talking, but that night his own car is similarly surrounded by goats,
and he sees what appears to be a bloody big werewolf in the
distance.
As a sucker for werewolf movies, the opening act of Alma & the Wolf had me fully onboard. Its blackly comic tone and messy antihero
are reminiscent of Jim Cummings' The Wolf of Snow Hollow, and the movie's refusal to conceal the obvious fact that its wolf is
clearly a man in a hairy suit makes it a bedfellow of Larry
Fessenden's Blackout. Unfortunately Alma & the Wolf begins to unravel at the same rapid pace as its booze-sodden
protagonist, and it won't be spoken of in the same breath as those other
two recent gems of werewolf cinema.
The movie can be broken down into three distinct acts. The first is a
quirky but relatively grounded mystery with a couple of interesting
leads in Embry's Ren and Lu's Alma, two broken people whose best years
are decades behind them. But then as the movie begins to get inside
Ren's fractured mind it turns into something completely different, an
over the top splatstick spectacle featuring men dancing in goat costumes
and supporting characters succumbing to what seems to be a mystery virus
that causes them to literally puke their guts up. The movie is so
upfront about making it clear that most of what we're watching probably
isn't real that we quickly lose any investment we had in the narrative.
When things take a strikingly dark turn in the grim final act, it's all
too jarring with the cartoonish nonsense that went before for it too
land with the desired emotional impact.
What Alma & the Wolf does have is a great turn from the under-rated Embry. As he
previously demonstrated with his lead role in Sean Baker's The Devil's Candy, he's very good at portraying a man trying to keep his sanity. Here
he's essentially asked to deliver three uniquely different turns with
each of the film's disparate three acts, demonstrating talent for both
comedy and tragedy all in one performance. Li is suitably enigmatic as
Ren's potential love interest (though I struggled to believe the
grizzled Embry and the sprightly Li had once been classmates), and with
a growing list of scene-stealing supporting turns, it's high time the
Chinese-American actress got a lead role. But Embry and Li's impressive
work can't save this shaggy dog story.
Alma & the Wolf is in US cinemas and on VOD from June 20th. A UK/ROI release
has yet to be announced.
