by Anthony O'Connor
If there were ever two genres known for being a bit dodgy, “werewolf” and “video game adaptation” feature high on the list. Sure, there are some great lycanthrope flicks – An American Werewolf in London, The Howling, Dog Soldiers – but the vast majority are baffle-witted cheapies where the monster looks more like a stroppy merkin than a furry killing machine.
Video game adaptations fare even worse, with barely a handful even rising to the level of ‘mildly watchable’. How, then, would a director helm a combination of the two to rise above the pitfalls that seem almost ubiquitous in previous attempts? The challenge falls to director Josh Ruben (Scare Me), who tackles the inevitable task of adapting Ubisoft’s VR title Werewolves Within. So, how does the 37-year-old get it done?
“With a name like Werewolves Within, it’s enough to freak out actors of a certain ilk,” Ruben explains. “But I did express to them, ‘I want to make Fargo as if it were an Amblin film’, and that put people at ease.”
Comedy horror is a deceptively tough genre to manage. For every Shaun of the Dead or Evil Dead 2, there’s a dozen lame, unfunny yawn-fests. Ruben, a veteran of Collegehumor.com, explained his technique: “I want irreverent characters that can be big but play their terror for real and don’t get caught trying to be funny. That’s kind of my MO. So long as you don’t get caught trying to be funny, within those confines, you kind of do your thing.
“I think that’s how I’m able to dance the line a bit. People like Jordan Peele and Leigh Whannell and John Krasinski even, who comes from sketch, like I do, from the world of Collegehumor, I think if you play in the world of testing genre enough, you kind of just feel it in your bones, whether something is too far or not far enough and how much you can get away with.”
Werewolves Within plays a bit like a well-crafted ensemble comedy with whodunit elements rather than a straightforward werewolf flick. And yet, perhaps surprisingly, those elements are handed deftly as well.
“I just wanted to be as true to my voice as I possibly could, as irreverent as I possibly could and, again, play terror for real. When it came to anything werewolf, in my mandate to our creature designer, Constantine Sekeris, was that, ‘I want to see the character emote through the makeup. I want the actors’ performance to come across through the prosthetics’.”
In terms of video game elements, was Josh constrained at all by Ubisoft? “It was kind of incredible. I was the one to be like, ‘Okay, we’re making a video game adaptation. What do I owe you? What about Easter eggs? What about anything else?’ They said, ‘You don’t owe us anything. You owe us a good movie’.”
Werewolves Within also delivers a fantastic lead performance in Finn (played by Sam Richardson), who is an oddly wholesome, affable bloke and not the usual protagonist in these sorts of films. “So, what’s really exciting to me, as a filmmaker, is to give people like Sam Richardson the opportunity to come in and not play a sidekick, but play the hero. Sam has the vulnerability that you could equate to even Jeff Daniels in Arachnophobia, the vulnerable sort of conflict within himself. Even Chief Brody [from Jaws], the kind of shy, suppressive of his feelings, sort of authoritarian figure. Sam just is the best person for the job. We thought, the extra layer here is the fact that this is a black man entering a predominantly white town trying to… He’s essentially put in the most uncomfortable position, he can’t be watching these people be terrible to one another, when all he wants is to be good.”
In terms of influences, Ruben is clear about those he wants to reference and those he respects, cinematically speaking. “I couldn’t not mention [John Carpenter’s] The Thing, because that’s an integral genre film. It’s about social deduction. It’s about smoking out the creature and about petty resentments boiling over and fracturing paranoia and the like. Also, Carpenter’s just rad and I talk consistently about his dark shadows; the recessed corners of dark in the background where things lurk, and his kind of tempered compositions that are just so effective. It’s what I aspire to match if I can. But also, again, Arachnophobia. Shit hits the fan in a small town and yet horror comedy played for real. I always mentioned Jeff Daniels facing off against a giant arachnid in his basement, in his wine cellar, but arguing with himself which Bordeaux to chuck at it!”
Werewolves Within releases July 1 in Australian cinemas and will certainly not have you fanging wine at the screen.
