Movie Thought: Woodwalkers (2024)

 

• Released: October 12, 2024
  
• Directed by: Damian John Harper
• Running time: 1h 43min
• Rating 3.5/5

Synopsis

A boy named Carag goes to a school for Woodwalkers, human-animal shapeshifters. He ends up joining a gang of rogue Woodwalkers who want to disable a mining company from destroying the nature reserve. But when human lives start to be at stake, Carag will have to make a difficult decision.

My Thoughts

I was pretty excited for this one, but also didn't have my expectations set too high. It's a German fantasy film and I was kinda fearing it might not be very good (such as the Die Schule der magischen Tiere films). But it was honestly a pretty darn good film.

Okay, nothing groundbreaking, but hear me out. It has some really nice things going for it. The world-building is legit pretty darn great with lots of things to discover about Woodwalkers and the secret lives they live. The school is a fun and interesting setting. It's visually a very nice-looking movie with loads of pretty scenery. The characters, especially our main cast, I thought were legit very likable and interesting. They never really felt irritating or unlikable, they felt like actual kids who are standing up for their moral values. Heck, even the bullies aren't completely one-note as they are fighting for a goal they perceive as heroic. And one of them forms an actual bond with Carag.

The main villain was also really, really good. He is definitely a bit sketchy early on in the movie, but not to the point his presence screams "I am evil". He genuinely shows care and interest in Carag and wants to mentor him to be the best cougar shifter he can be. His motivation is also pretty darn tragic, with his wife and toddler daughter, both also cougar Woodwalkers, being hunted and killed and taxidermied as trophies. This caused him to hate humans and their nature-destroying activities. 

And honestly...you can kinda see his point. Yeah, sure, him risking innocent lives in the process of his plans to thwart the humans isn't great, but legit, his idea of stopping people like the mining company from destroying the last bits of wild nature left is a noble goal. I like this guy as a villain, he's genuinely well-written and I also love how he does legit care about the hero. Yeah, their dynamic isn't exactly great after the climax, but he still doesn't exactly hate Carag after all that, even if the feeling isn't mutual (Carag definitely no longer likes him). So this was a neat villain who had some strong motivations and a great dynamic with the hero.

Another thing I genuinely liked about the movie is that it used real (wild) animals, but also really kept their welfare in mind. If you think back to most movies around the 1950s-1990s that used real animal actors, their welfare often wasn't kept in mind and they were put into dangerous situations (such a bear and dog fighting one another) or made to do a lot of unnatural tricks or things.

Here, they do use real animals for the most part, but it's all done very well. The animals are mostly just enacting their natural behavior, they are not put in harm's way, wild animal-human interactions are kept to a minimum and they used CGI or editing tricks when necessary. I really like that they went this route. 

Another option would be to use only CGI animals, like the recent Call of the Wild adaptation, but that really didn't work for me (and a lot of other people) and can be a bit off-putting. So them mostly using real animals while also keeping their welfare in mind was a good call.

Yeah, I genuinely think this is a very solid movie. Apparently this is going to be a trilogy, so I look forward to the next installment whenever that drops.