Movie Thoughts: Wolf (2021)

• Released: September 17th, 2021
• Directed by: Nathalie Biancheri
• Running time: 1h 39min
• Rating 2/5

Synopsis

A young man named Jacob is a therian, believing that he's a wolf. He is sent to an asylum for people with the same condition, where the ruthless doctor there is trying to "cure" them of their theriantropy by abusing them as ruthlessly as possible. Jacob also bonds with Cecile, a wildcat therian who lives at the asylum permanently. Will they find a way to be themselves away from the abuse of Dr. Mann?  

My Thoughts

I was kinda hoping for something better, not gonna lie. Theriantropy is a topic that doesn't get touched on in a lot of movies, so when I saw that this was a movie about them I was pretty interested. But this movie...eh.

I mean, it does portray the therians in a sympathetic light, I'll give it that. Jacob, Cecile and Rufus are all pretty decent characters and you do sympathize with them. 

But then there's also the fact that this movie is basically showing the therians being constantly abused by Dr. Mann in various graphic ways and it just gets to be a lot. It feels honestly just very mean-spirited. I really wish that there was more focus in this movie on the therians just happily being themselves, without constantly being mocked and abused and forced to hide their true selves. Because right now it feels like a borderline torture porn of these poor characters. I don't know, sometimes something can just feel too mean-spirited to me, and this was such a case.

Overall this is an interesting concept of a movie but it just felt too mean-spirited. The main characters are decent, but the constantly depressing tone and also the fact that it was shot quite uninterestingly (boring cinematography) made it just feel dour and at times kinda boring, too. 

Therians deserve a better movie honestly.