Werewolves Withinis like a tasty mug of hot chocolate for fans of Agatha Christie andThe Howling. Forest ranger Finn Wheeler (Sam Richardson) arrives at his new post in the snowy hamlet of Beaverfield when a series of bizarre, gruesome incidents leave the townsfolk convinced a werewolf is among them. Cut off from help by a heavy snowstorm, Finn races to discover the culprit with the help of the town postal worker Cecily (Milana Vayntrub) as both tensions and the body count begin to rise. Directed by CollegeHumor alumnusJosh Ruben, whose debut filmScare Meplayed with a similar locked-room premise,Werewolves Withinis a comedy-horror whodunnit that mostly works, and jolts a largely dormant genre with a charming new spark. Bolstered by a game-as-hell cast led by the always delightful Richardson and Vayntrub, the film is both a straightforward murder mystery and an impish subversion, and not merely due to the presence of a bonafide werewolf.
But how can that be? Executing two disparate concepts within the same narrative would make the film some sort of cursed shapeshifter. I dunno what kind, I’ll think of the word later. But I assure you,Werewolves Withinmanages to be a classic whodunnit that is also gleefully subversive, and to explain how, I need to back up a bit.
RELATED:How ‘Cursed’ Tried to Be the ‘Scream’ of Werewolf Movies and Failed Miserably
Firstly, there is an important distinction between a murder mystery and a whodunnit. A specific subgenre of murder mystery, a whodunnit typically involves a murder (duh), a static group of suspects, and a detective tasked with unraveling the puzzle, which is specifically the identity of the killer. The puzzle is arguably the most vital component, as a large part of a whodunnit’s appeal is the fun of trying to solve the mystery and the knowledge that the solution is in fact solvable. That may sound obvious, but it isn’t always the case – take Season 1 ofTrue Detective, for example.[Minor spoilers ahead.]While certain elements of the mystery could be solved by the audience, the identity of the killer is impossible to guess, because it is a character we’re not introduced to until the final act.[Minor spoilers behind.]Mysteries likeTrue Detective(which is an example of the procedural subgenre, likeLaw & Order) withold information from the audience to keep the full solution unguessable. Conversely, the whodunnit is kind of like the crossword puzzle of mystery stories – our enjoyment depends entirely on being given all the clues we need to figure it out. (Incidentally,Werewolves Withinfeatures a fun red herring in the form of aTrue DetectiveEaster egg.)
There’s a dearth of whodunnits in cinema, both recently and in general. They used to be a major component of fiction’s bread and butter, perhaps the bread, or the butter, or even the plate. Giants like Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle dominated the early part of the 20th century. That led into popular radio programs likeSuspenseandThe Shadow, then into the classic noir mysteries from the golden age of Hollywood, including iconic films likeThe Big Sleepand a sizeable chunk ofAlfred Hitchcock’s filmography. But the well has sort of dried up in recent years in favor of films that break the format.
One currently popular trend is to subvert the whodunnit, with films likeKnives OutandThe Girl on the Trainthrowing wrinkles into the formula to create mysteries that upend expectations.Knives Outsets up a whodunnit that could’ve been written by Christie herself and then tips the whole thing on its head by revealing early on that the “murder” victim actually killed himself, suddenly shifting gears into a completely different genre of mystery. Meanwhile,The Girl on the Trainfunctions as a whodunnit but throws an additional wrench into the narrative by making the detective an unreliable narrator, meaning we’re told early on that we can’t completely trust anything the detective thinks she is seeing or hearing. Those are two completely viable mysteries, and subverting genre tropes is necessary to keep things fresh and interesting. But the problem is, in terms of whodunnits, we don’t have much of a baseline to subvert. For instance, take an outlier likeDeadpool. That film and its sequel spoof superhero films, which are the biggest and most lucrative genre of films in history. The market isfloodedwith them: we get at minimum two new MCU features every year on top of whatever nonsense DC decides to roll out. Injecting a little subversion into an oversaturated genre is just what the doctor ordered. However, subverting a genre that is already relatively sparse, such as whodunnits, just runs the risk of frustrating an audience paying to see a good old fashioned detective yarn.
The werewolf whodunnit subgenre, however, is the best of both worlds. It is undeniably a subversion, because most stories do not contain werewolves, so their inclusion is enough to make any audience pause. But a werewolf whodunnit is also very much a traditional whodunnit. You get to have your cake and eat it too if your killer is a werewolf, andWerewolves Withinembraces that notion to terrific effect.
Werewolf whodunnits have the potential to be more fun (at least for me) because in addition to being a sneaky murderer leaving a trail of enticing clues for the audience to decipher, the culprit is also a literal monster. There’s a certain level of appeal to casting the villain of your otherwise “normal” story as a terrifying creature of folklore. Imagine if the bank robbers inHeatwere a bunch of Draculas. Or if Adonis had to fight a creature from the black lagoon inCreed 3. A light sprinkling of supernatural fantasy can make a well-trod story a little more unexpected, and it is always welcome in my book. (I am dying for a John Grisham courtroom drama in which the plucky young Southern defense attorney discovers that the odious prosecutor is secretly a mummy.)
Tossing a werewolf into a whodunnit also makes the mystery more challenging for audiences to solve. This is because a shapeshifting demon allows for several additional spins to the traditional murder mystery motive. For instance, the killer can have an ordinary motive, like revenge or money or their team losing the World Series, and merely be using their lycanthropy as the murder weapon. The killer can also have no motive at all and be completely at the mercy of whatever the hell their werewolf half decides to do following a transformation. But there are further subcategories of motive even within that context – the killer can be fully aware that they are the werewolf and be actively thwarting the investigation or otherwise screwing with the suspect pool to remain concealed. Or they can be completely unaware that they are the werewolf, and genuinely participate in the investigation. The additional permutations of motive made possible by a werewolf killer gives the film the opportunity to challenge its audience with a more clever and outside-the-box trail of breadcrumbs to follow that doesn’t withold any information, and that’s ultimately what this subgenre of mystery is all about.
Without spoiling anything,Werewolves Withinutilizes the supernatural nature of its premise to subvert both the whodunnit and the werewolf whodunnit. It’s not even truly a subversion. It’s more accurately a love letter to the genre that plays a shell game with established tropes to toy with the audience’s expectations and prevent them from guessing the killer’s identity too easily. And it couldn’t have pulled that off, or pulled it off so well, without a goddamn werewolf.
KEEP READING:Why 2011’s Red Riding Hood Is a Fascinatingly Silly ‘Twilight’ Clone
