Before he decided that there was more money to be made as a low rent L. Ron Hubbard, Whitley Strieber wrote a couple of enjoyable, pulpy horror novels. While The Hunger is probably better known because of a) vampires and b) lesbians, and the obligatory merging of those two ideas, I think the film and novel of Wolfen are more interesting. The ground is less well trod than sexy female vampires and the themes resonate a little more broadly.

It’s a shame that it’s necessary to spoil the plot here, but after nearly thirty years it’s fair game, because the build-up and mystery over what, exactly, has been killing people in New York, and why, is handled very nicely. An international developer, his wife and their bodyguard are brutally murdered in Battery Park, the corpses dismembered and apparently partially eaten. Suspicion falls on unnamed terrorist groups, largely at the suggestion of a representative of a private security firm which hunts down terrorists on behalf of wealthy clients. While officially authorities investigate communist groups looking for a scapegoat for the killings, the coroner’s office is unable to find any traces of a weapon on the bodies and, further complicating matters, finds animal hairs that link the deaths to the deaths of street people in an area of urban blight that the dead industrialist is planning to gentrify.

Now, maybe this was an early sign that Strieber was going to go a little woo happy in later years, but it’s at this point in the film that Albert Finney as the rationalist, curmudgeonly, implied to be trigger happy-if not outright corrupt-cop decides that, on the basis of this evidence, that the most likely suspect in the killings is: a Native American shape-shifter. It’s an interesting red herring, as there have been some curious quick shots of Indians being spiritual within an urban environment and hating on The Man. But when all your evidence is pointing to “animal” and the skeptical character is leaning towards a supernatural explanation for events, something has maybe gone off the rails a little bit. And I think it really does come down to the aforesaid woo-ish tendencies of Strieber. Because, you see, this whole Native American/shape-shifter thing comes down to the fact that our red brothers are more in touch with the natural world, maaan, dig it. It’s that weirdly paternalistic attitude about “wise, noble savages” that so many Americans are inflicted with used as a plot element in a horror film. Even though the film gives itself an out, that Finney is just being messed with and the Indians are feeding him a load of bull because he’s a borderline fascist, we’re still left with the suggestion that all Native Americans have super mystical senses.

Eventually, the truth comes out, that the real threat is wolves. Not just any wolves, super-intelligent wolves that have lived hidden in American cities for centuries, picking off people who won’t be missed (thinning the herd, as it were), and only now making their presence felt because Euro-trash real estate developers are tearing down the slums and urban squalor that the live and hunt in. And this actually rings true to me. People have a weird relationship to the natural world. They want to appreciate it at a distance, they feel guilty for destroying it, but all the same they don’t want it intruding on their world. I live in Southern California. I know people who freak out at even the barest suggestion that maybe there are coyotes or mountain lions living in the hills behind their houses, even though statistics and the exercise of common sense means they are all almost never going to have an encounter with one or the other. We feel guilty over destroying the land that these animals used, but we don’t want them around all the same. So, actually, maybe that Native American connection wasn’t quite so ham-fisted after all.

One of the dangers with attempting to mix science and the supernatural in your horror movie is that, unless you very carefully blend the two realms together, you risk creating something that’s an incoherent mess and fails to satisfy fans of either approach. And such is the case with this film, where John Carpenter wants to present an “ancient astronauts” theory of theology with a filmic approach to the subject of quantum mechanics, and ended up making a movie where Satan is a bottle of green goo in a church basement.

Carpenter’s real intent is pretty broadly telegraphed. “Martin Quartermass” is a rather poor pseudonym to adopt if you don’t want people to figure out the inspiration for your movie. And, in fact, a tremendous amount of exposition here takes the form of translated latin documents and scientists making astonishing claims about the impossibility of the discoveries they’re making. The gist of it is, seven million years ago, Satan, in the form of a viscous green liquid came to Earth in an attempt to free his “father”, the Anti-God, from an extra-dimensional prison. He was trapped, and some time later an alien, by the name of Jesus, came to warn the Earth about what Satan really was, but he was killed because no one wanted to hear it. The Catholic Church then covered all this up so well that even they forgot the truth. And in the midst of all this people in the future are beaming a video into people’s dreams via tachyon emissions to try and warn them about the very stupid thing they’re doing fussing around with Satan In A Jar.
At this point, even Von Daniken thinks the film is straining suspension of disbelief just a tad.

To be fair to Carpenter, as over the top as all that is, by itself it would have been a perfectly acceptable plot for a film. Where things really go off the rack is in the semi-supernatural elements that are introduced. The film’s rationale is that these are just the byproducts of the super-advanced quantum effects of having Satan in a jar in your basement, but I apparently missed the day in physics class where we discussed how a plus spin state results in a rain of worms. If you want me to accept a purely supernatural explanation for strange phenomena, I can. I’m fully willing to take demon possession and zombies and satanic mind-control in my stride if you want me to believe that it’s magic. (Even if your film’s use of homeless people as minions of evil is an odd choice that suggests a strange political statement that’s never adequately articulated.) I can do it. But asking me to accept that homeless people turn into homicidal killing machines because a math equation is being written down a hundred yards away…no, sorry, can’t do that.

The best way to approach the film is to take it with tongue firmly in cheek. The film can’t be taken seriously past a certain point, so to enjoy it, you need to have fun with it. Yes, it has Victor Wong in an amazingly subdued performance and Donald Pleasence in an over the top one. But it also has Jameson Parker in a lead role that’s gayer than a gay thing that’s very gay. It’s gayer than Freddie Mercury in drag duetting with Liza Minelli. I mean, just look at the gay…tucked in polo shirt with khakis, a man bag, a magnificent porno stache…and he flirts with women by doing card tricks, when he isn’t playing shirtless solitaire. He’s the A Gay of every Log Cabiners dreams. He’s not crying at the end of the film because his “girlfriend” dived into a mirror so that Satan and Anti-God would be trapped forever. He’s crying because now he has to find a new beard.

Over at The ISB Chris has declared it Dracula Week. I can only assume that this is because Chris feels like he needs an excuse to discuss scenes of vampires being kicked in the face by Batman. Because Dracula is, outside of Stoker’s novel, kind of lame. There is, however, one cinematic moment in which the Count very nearly redeems himself. And that’s the time he got taken down, along with all the other monsters that Universal Pictures made movies about, by a group of pre-adolescent boys in The Monster Squad, a feat only slightly less embarrassing for vampires as a whole than that time that the Count got beheaded by an effete British lawyer and his drinking buddies.

Monster Squad is of that last generation of children’s films where children are allowed to act like children do when adults aren’t around, before the genre became horribly sanitized for fear of offending adult sensibilities. The kids in this film curse, smoke and take naked photos of the girl next door. They also, curiously, show an anachronistic fascination with movie monsters of the 1930s and 40s. Even at the time of release, this seemed a bit odd to me. I was only marginally older than these kids were supposed to be, and boys my age who were interested in horror, to a one, thought that vampires and mummies and the like were horribly childish and lame. No, it was the slasher villain-heroes who fascinated them, figures like Freddy Kreuger and Jason Voorhees. I’d be surprised if more than one in a hundred even knew what a Gill Man was supposed to be. (As for myself, my loyalties to werewolves as the supreme avatars of horror films were formed even then, making me the exception that proved the rule.) If anything, the fascination with old school monsters, despite a mocking discussion of a “Groundhog Day” series of slasher films two characters indulge in, strikes me as screenwriters Frank Dekker and Shane Black talking about boys when they were that age, and moving them forward in time to a contemporary setting. The late 60s/early 70s feels like a more natural point for a group of proto-geeks to be masters of black and white horror film trivia.

Still, there is plenty that the film gets right about kids. As I said, the behavior rings true, as does the frustration with adults, who veer between patronizing and self-involved neglect in their treatment of children. The squabbling nature, casual cruelty and one upmanship of adolescent boys, particularly friends, is also captured accurately. Part of that, though, is the period in which it was made. The legacy of The Goonies hangs heavy over this film, with the Frankenstein Monster taking Sloth’s role as the retarded child-like adult who bonds with the children. Even Scary German Guy’s role as the only adult who believes the children about the monsters planning to take over the world, because he himself is an outsider as well, feels like it’s lifted from other films of the era. The odd emphasis that is placed on indicating to the audience that Scary German Guy is a holocaust survivor, and the he believes the children because “he knows about monsters” is an uncomfortably shocking reminder of real world horrors into what is otherwise a fairly straight-forward “scary but not too scary” movie for kids too young to buy a ticket to an R rated movie.

But enough of quibbles. At the end of the day, while the film is fun, it’s nowhere near good enough to worry about such matters. At it’s heart, this is about why kids love monsters and being scared. Because it’s fun, primarily. Because it’s a way to annoy your parents is another. Because it’s a way for kids who are slightly out of step with their school or peers to find something to be good at is in there as well. None of that is explicit or presented in a moralistic fashion, though, it’s just threaded through the film. It’s recognizable at a level that connects with the audience without being overt, which is a good tack to take, since the primary audience would be children, who aren’t the most analytical viewers but can still sense when they’re being talked down to.

There’s a bit of nerd pandering going on as well. Again, outside of any questions of quality, seeing five monster movie icons gathered together is pretty damn cool. True, they get their asses handed to them by a bunch of pre-teen boys, but that’s the kind of wish fulfillment that good kid’s movies try to provide anyway. Why else would the token fat kid get to give some comeuppance to a pair of bullies if there wasn’t some fantasy element at play? And the monsters even, mostly, ring true. The Wolfman is tortured by his dual nature. Dracula is crafty and menacing, but ultimately undone by his own arrogance and failure to understand that he doesn’t fit into the modern world. Frankenstein’s Monster is misunderstood…and Gill Man and the Mummy don’t really do much but add atmosphere to a couple of scenes. But, really, a Mummy is just a very particular zombie and Gill Man, while I’m sure he has fans, is too specific to one film franchise to really merit much consideration. Again, not important, it was just intended to be monster equivalent of a team-up.
And in any case, the only thing most men of my generation care about is that this is the film that established, once and for all, that lycanthropes have testicles.

Given the dearth of werewolf films, almost all of them are worth seeking out for those of us who are fed up with vampires and zombies and masked slashers. So it’s an even bigger thrill than just finding a werewolf movie when you can find a werewolf movie that’s actually good.

Neil Marshall’s debut film uses the tried and true “monster picks off group one by one” formula to good effect here, mixing it with the slightly less common “soldiers fight unearthly enemy” trope. You also get a strong dose of the “spam in a cabin” theme, as the soldiers choose to hide from the beasts stalking them in what, in hindsight, was a really poor choice, strategy-wise. And it’s this mixing of familiar plots that makes the film work as well as it does. Horror does very well when it’s a synthesis of what has come before, especially when that synthesis is mixed with a new idea or a new approach. True, Marshall is probably leaning more towards reworking what other people have done before, but he still gives the whole enterprise the feel of something new and fresh, so that the end result doesn’t feel like you’re just watching Alien with werewolves in a farm house.

Marshall’s script does a quick job of establishing baseline personalities for the characters, which honestly is all that’s needed, because as the nature of these things go, there’s no point in becoming too attached to anyone. That the cast is good helps make these simplistic characterizations more palatable, particularly Sean Pertwee and Liam Cunningham, who both make two potentially cliche-prone characters feel more rounded. The plot is fairly basic as well, moving briskly from point to point, establishing the threat before hunkering down in the final half for the cabin-based attrition to come. What Marshall doesn’t avoid, however, is a strong work-around for a couple of rather predictable and over fore-shadowed heel turns that make the dwindling of the cast feel even more rote than is neccessary.

John Carpenter’s follow-up to the seminal Halloween is, frequently, negatively compared to his other films. It’s probably true that, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not the classic work of cinema that some of his other creations are. On the other hand, it’s a well-crafted horror film that has, over the years, garnered a strong reputation as a more mature story than many of Carpenter’s other films.

From the beginning, Carpenter and co-writer Debra Hill, create a sense of unreality for the film. Even more than the usual distancing effects of cinema, The Fog calls into question the nature of “reality” on a movie screen. The first image we see is a quote from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe: “is all that we see or seem/but a dream within a dream?” From there, we move to a scene of an old man telling a campfire ghost story to a group of children. It could easily be argued that from this that what we are about to witness is, within the screen, “just a story.” I find this line of thought very interesting, because most horror films rely on a plausible reality for their effectiveness as an entry point for the audience. A way for them to identify with the characters and suspend their disbelief. But potentially adding that extra layer of artifice blocks the audience from identification, leaving them more adrift and unsettled.

The method in which the film is shot adds to this disquieting effect. Large expanses of empty spaces preoccupy this film. Vast oceans. Deserted streets. Empty churches. There are great swathes of nothingness in this film, with human figures lone and isolated in these landscapes. When the fog rolls into these spaces, they are filled with a thick and palpable sense of dread and foreboding. The use of fog as a carrier for evil also works wonderfully here. Anyone who has driven or walked alone through a thick fog knows how disquieting it is. Carpenter replicates that unease and compounds it, because the audience knows that, this time, there really is something that means to do people harm in it.

That use of unease and uncertainty created by the fog is compounded by the nature of what is in it. We’re already operating under the rules of a campfire tale, so even the frayed logic of the supernatural is at question here. All we can truly guess about the nature of what is in the fog is that it is motivated by a desire for revenge. The question of whether the creatures in the fog are zombies or ghosts or demons or something else entirely is never resolved, never exactly addressed, and ultimately unimportant. They are, simply, a menace. A misguided and eternal grudge from beyond the grave. Even by the logic of a horror story, their motive and nature is unclear. We are led to believe that they want the gold that was stolen by the townpeople’s ancestors. We are also led to believe that they seek to kill the descendants of the conspirators who killed them a hundred years ago. Both theories prove to be, at best, incomplete, as they menace those not connected to the conspiracy and are not satisfied with having their property returned. They simply are, and there is no reasoning or promise of respite for them.

It’s extremely rare these days to find a film that genuinely feels like it has something new and interesting to say about the horror genre. The field is simply too crowded with torture-porn gore-fests, remakes and sequels. Flashes of originality are rare and to be treasured. The problem with that is, when someone does show a bit of originality, the danger of over-praising the work is strong. I approached Michael Dougherty’s directorial debut with some skepticism because of that. It had been highly praised, yes, but by nerds, who tend to mistake pandering for quality. Dougherty was also partially responsible for both X2 and Superman Returns, and those are not strong entries to have on one’s curriculum vitae.
I needn’t have worried. The film really is that good.

Part of why it works so well, I think, is that it wears its influences on its sleeve quite boldly. There are strong hints of Creepshow, particularly in the comic-book style montage that opens and closes the film. Since that’s pretty close to the pinnacle of the anthology horror film, it’s a good goal to set for yourself, and while time and public opinion will be the judge, I think Trick ‘r Treat comes pretty damn close to meeting it. There’s also a strong similarity to the classic British horror anthologies as well, more Amicus than Hammer, with the grim humor and tales of people getting their comeuppance for sometimes only vaguely defined transgressions. I’ve also spotted several comparisons to Pulp Fiction, which…don’t quite ring true to me, and suggests that American audiences (or nerd audiences) are so limited in their viewing habits that any hint of inter-related stories or non-linear structure make them think of Tarantino.

So, why does it work? This is where I feel the need to bite my tongue. The film, frankly, is too new, and I like it too much, to delve too strongly into the structure and nuance for fear of spoiling it for people. And I really don’t want to spoil it, because with my strongest recommendation I’m telling you to go see this. But one of the reasons it works is that it hits several good horror archetypes as well as working recognizable and well known Halloween specific myths and habits into the structure. You’ve got human monsters, and you’ve got the supernatural, and they collide in interesting and unexpected ways. And on the Halloween side of things, you’ve got the notion of “safety rules” to follow, and consequences for violating them, Halloween pranks and, of course, the social contract that is trick-or-treating.

As a horror fan, there are a number of things to admire as well. You’ve got gore, but gore isn’t the point. You’ve got nudity, because good horror cheese requires some nudity. You’ve also got a horror film that isn’t afraid to kill children. This last fact is often cited as the reason why the film sat on a shelf for two years before being dumped to DVD, though personally I suspect it had more to do with studio executives skittish of releasing a holiday themed film against whatever Saw sequel was scheduled for release that year.

The cast does a tremendous job as well. Brian Cox is at a point in his career where he can essentially do no wrong, and he does a good job here as a stereotypical grumpy neighbor who doesn’t get into the Halloween spirit (in the weakest of the four main stories, sadly, as it bears strong similarities to a long-ago episode of Tales from the Darkside). Dylan Baker has a nice role as well, in what is probably the most spoiled storyline judging from reviews. And Anna Paquin is quite good as well playing a virginal young woman dragged along by her older sister for some Halloween hijinks. Even the film’s mascot, the little round-headed kid, Sam, works well, functioning as a silent observer of the stories that unfold around him. It’s the best use of a horror “host” and even when he gets a starring role in a story, it’s one that’s tonally appropriate both for the film and the character.

And that’s as much as I can say without spoiling the movie. Really, there are some absolutely brilliant dark jokes that I can’t even hint at, clever but natural twists, and some genuine shocks and surprises. Just go watch it.

As a reader and viewer, I’m a big fan of ambiguity. I like it when works have room for multiple meanings and interpretations. Which is why I always feel slightly chastised when I have to reluctantly admit that, yes, I do in fact think that there are some hard and fast rules for what does and does not constitute a work in the “horror” genre.

For me the rule is very simple, at least it sounds so: if it involves aliens, it’s science-fiction, not horror. When pressured, I’ll even go so far as to say that if a film or novel’s story involves any iteration of “science gone bad” it should probably be considered science-fiction and not horror. This still leaves plenty of room for science-fiction to be scary, and even opens up room for a bastardized hybrid genre, sci-horror, but does give us a good base on which to separate two genres from each other for ease of discussion.

There are, naturally, a whole bunch of problems with this approach. For one, it almost entirely ignores the intent of the creators. It’s obvious that Alien is meant to be a horror film, for example. It could be argued that a work exists within the horror genre if it’s supposed to be a work of horror. But then, I’ve never been one to put primacy on authorial intent. It’s too limiting, and tends to completely cut off the possibility of multiple meanings. The example I like to use is Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. People continue to read and value works because they have meaning to them, regardless of how far from the time of creation the reader is. In that play’s case, people have found it to be a commentary on British anxiety over colonial enterprises. Or the story of a father trying to shield his daughter from the outside world. Or a political propaganda piece directed at those questioning James I’s right to the throne. Or an examination of the dysfunction that exists in the British class system. Would we still be reading it if the only possible meaning is that old Will felt like writing about a wizard who lives with fairies?

Another flaw with this logic is that it excludes a lot of early, important works in the genre. If we consider tales of “science gone wrong” as science-fiction rather than horror, then that makes Frankenstein and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde works of science-fiction. This is a problematic position, as those two works, along with Dracula, are as close to ur-texts as modern horror has. We can perhaps overlook this if we suppose that prior to the twentieth century, fantastical works were not a distinct enough category of fiction to necessitate the kinds of genre distinctions we have now.

A parallel argument to this I’ve seen occur from time to time is whether the slasher sub-genre, which is generally considered to be horror, is more properly classified as a type of mystery or thriller story. The roots of the genre appear to trace back pretty strongly to the “whodunnit” style of mystery, and it could be argued that slasher stories are essentially murder mysteries that incorporate the cultural fascination with serial and spree killers into their plots and themes. This is where I risk making a hypocrite of myself, because while I see the logic, it doesn’t practically work for me. There’s no “mystery” to a film like Halloween of Friday the 13th, because the identity of the killer is incidental to the story. One of the problems that has arisen with the slasher as a genre, as I see it, is the rock star-ification of the killer. The best slasher films treat the killer as a Macguffin. The story is about the Last Girl. Treating the killer as the heroic, audience identification figure leads us to trash like Saw and Hostel, where the point isn’t to scare the audience but to see how much we can make them squirm by presenting them with unpleasant images.

So what, then, does constitute horror? I think there are two key components. The first is a clear intention to frighten the audience. The second is to create a world in which the natural order of things is suspended. While this would suggest that supernatural themes are paramount in horror works, it also leaves room for the more human and human-as-monster works, as being stalked by a masked killer is not part of your average person’s everyday experience.
But that’s just me. What about you? What makes something “horror” and what does and doesn’t belong in the genre?

Sometimes, it becomes painfully clear how and where a movie that sounds good on paper goes disastrously off the rails. I mean, here you have legendary horror director Tobe Hooper making a movie combining aliens, vampires and zombies, and it’s based on a well regarded novel by Colin Wilson (even if it was published after he entered the woo-peddling phase of his career.

And then the first image you see on screen is the Cannon films logo, followed by the names Golan and Globus, and you know that you’re going to be in for a rough time.

To start with, we get a long, slow pan over a spaceship exterior that is clearly meant to evoke Star Wars. And then we get organic spaceship interiors that are meant to evoke Alien. And then we get the full frontal female nudity. And honestly, that’s really what the movie is about. Oh, sure, we can probably find some film critics who will gussy up a review of the film with some commentary about the “male gaze” and the use of feminine signifiers and homoeroticism as monstrous invasions of the male psyche. And that stuff is there, buried deep within a movie that uses soft-core porn imagery to tell the story of a naked woman from space who nearly destroys the world.

It’s a gloriously bad film. Enormously entertaining, in that way that bad films can sometimes be, but the mish-mash of elements never really works out. There’s one genuinely good line in the film, “it’ll be less terrifying if you just come to me”, an absolutely brilliant line in context, but that’s really it. You can see Patrick Stewart hamming it up in a particularly ill-conceived career move and that’s the limit of the star power. But you can’t look away. There’s something horribly compelling about the over-wrought acting, the soft-core nudity and comical “seduction” scenes, the sheer incompatibility of the vampire and alien and zombie tropes in the film. It can probably be chocked up to the strange ability Golan and Globus had as film producers to make something that connects with the audience at a visceral level, no matter how horrible the actual filmed product is. You see those opening scenes, with those curious shots that put you in mind of science-fiction films you did enjoy, and then get thrown the batshit crazy premise of “Vampires! In Space!” and you have to see what comes of this.

And it turns out to be mostly boobies and you feel like you just wasted an hour and a half.

Neil Jordan’s densely metaphoric adaptation of Angela Carter’s “Red Riding Hood” inspired short stories is one of those very, very rare things: an intelligent horror movie. It actually starts to work against the film, in subtle ways, as at a certain point the film stops being about even the pretense of horror or the supernatural and starts to disappear up its own sense of symbolism.

Which is fine, to be honest; the symbolism in question has some real punch to it, and as I said, any flicker of intelligence or intellectual depth in anything even approaching the horror genre is rare enough to be treasured.

The film opens in the “real” world, with intercut shots of a teenage girl in a white gown running through the woods and a car racing down a road, which eventually join together to give us an image of the girl, Alice, arriving home just in time to make it look to her parents in the car as if she has been at home all along, caring for her younger sister Rosaleen. We then move into Rosaleen’s room, filled with antique toys, and see Rosaleen, her face childishly made up with her sister’s stolen make-up, dreaming. From there the bulk of the film is actually of Rosaleen’s dream world, where we see a dream-Alice attacked by giant versions of Rosaleen’s toys before being set upon by a pack of wolves. Dream-Rosaleen lives in a simple, rural village, in an indeterminate time period, and she lives a simple life of farmwork, flirtations with a neighbor boy, and stories from her grandmother about the dangers of wolves. Or men. Or men as wolves. Granny’s stories are a potent mix of rural horror stories about the dangers of wolfmen and not very subtle warnings to Rosaleen about the sexual appetites of men. Rosaleen’s reaction to the stories is interesting as well. Shes fascinated by the violence and sexual overtones of the stories, but rebels against the moral prohibitions that they imply. Tellingly, when Rosaleen is told that her sister died because she strayed from the path (that is, became sexually active), Rosaleen’s response is to ask “why couldn’t she save herself?” She repeatedly questions the role of women in her grandmother’s stories and warnings as perennial victims.

Rosaleen’s resistance to the warnings against male and female sexuality reach their heights when the film flips into full on “Red Riding Hood” mode when Rosaleen, in her red shawl knitted for her by her grandmother, gets waylaid on her journey through the woods to bring her grandmother a basket of wood by a handsome hunter who claims to have lost his way. He and Rosaleen make a bet, that if he can get to her grandmother’s house before her, she will give him a kiss. You know how the story usually goes at this point, up to and including the hunter’s instruction to Rosaleen to burn her clothes in the fire, since she won’t need them anymore, but at that point the story becomes new and far more interesting, as Rosaleen decides that, unlike her sister, she can save herself, and she forces the hunter back into his wolf form and takes control of the situation for herself. In the morning, the people of her village search through the woods for Rosaleen, only to find two wolves in her grandmother’s house, one wearing Rosaleen’s cross, who both escape into the woods. The final image of the film is of a pack of wolves racing through the real Rosaleen’s house, before bursting through the walls of her bedroom and destroying her toys.

The symbolism gets pretty heavy handed in all this, and it’s more deftly handled in Angela Carter’s original prose works, but it’s still pretty compelling stuff. The neat trick that I think Jordan pulls here is setting us up to see werewolves as a horror metaphor for sexual aggression in men, but by showing us Rosaleen’s assertion of her own identity, we see them instead as a parable of both a young woman’s sexual identity awakening but also of her intellectual and emotional transition from childhood into an adult identity. It’s frustrating also because of that, because the film tends to suffer from its own sense of importance. Far too much time is spent dragging out imagery, reminding us that “this is important” or “this is a symbol.”