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(l. to r.) Julian Morris, Jared Padalecki, Lindy Booth and Kristy Wu co-star in Cry_Wolf.
Cry_Wolf was a film that arrived in theaters with little fanfare, enjoyed a six to seven week wide-run, and then disappeared as quickly as it arrived. This was director Jeff Wadlow’s first foray into the world of feature-length films. His two previous efforts were of the short variety… with his first (The Tower of Babble) available in the bonus features section of the DVD release! And it is definitely worth a look.
Even The Horror Guru passed this one up during its theatrical run for more important things… all of which I can not remember at this time. For that, I’m actually kind of bummed out. I really wish I had seen this small, but great horror film on the big screen. While I did love the flick, I think it loses a tiny bit of its power on the television set.
In Cry_Wolf’s opening scene, we see a beautiful, young girl frantically running through the woods at night apparently being chased by some unseen assailant. After losing the prey, the killer whips out a cell phone, and calls the very girl being sought after. Once her cell phone rings (of course she has a cell!), the killer can pinpoint her position, and BLAMMO! Within two minutes, we already have our first kill!
After its great open, the film does tend to drag just a hair for the next 15-20 minutes or so, as we get to some tiresome, but necessary, exposition. We meet Owen (Julian Morris), a newly-transferred student to a posh prep school. He is befriended by a hot and fiery redhead, Dodger (Lindy Booth), who invites him to a “secret meeting”.
This game played by seven other classmates, including Owen’s roommate Tom (Jared Padalecki), is described as “a lying game”. The goal is to avoid suspicion, manipulate your friends, and eliminate your enemies… a mantra that really rings true by the end of the film. One person is secretly tapped as the liar and is known simply as “The Wolf”. Everyone else is termed “Sheep”, and it is their job to attempt to spot The Wolf and convince the others to vote him/her out. If they can succeed, they win the money.
After Owen proves to be quite the player, spotting "The Wolf" almost immediately, the group decides to abandon the game as it no longer has the same excitement value. That is, until a few days later when Dodger comes up with a new twist on the game.
Drawing off the local headlines of a girl slain in the woods, Dodger brings the group together and tells them about a new game. This time, all eight of the friends are a collective Wolf, and everyone else on campus are the Sheep. The Wolves attempt to convince the campus that the person who killed the girl is actually a serial killer and is planning on continuing his terror at their school.
How would a group of students do this, you ask? How else… but to use the spectacular invention known as a chain email, detailing the murderers notorious reign of horror at some other campuses. The email gives a complete description of the killer, as well as describing his M.O. Owen then sends this chain letter as a mass email to the entire campus… where, in turn, they forward it to their friends, etc.
Eventually, Owen gets a strange instant message from someone with the screen name of “Wolf”. After successfully being spooked by the messages, Owen believes its one of his friends playing a joke on him. After exhausting all possibilities and coming up empty-handed, he begins to think that actual murderer somehow got hold of the email, and is trying to use it to kill more people on the campus.
While one might think Cry_Wolf would have been better-suited to a release about 10 years ago (during the post-Scream phase of the genre), I think it works perfectly today. The film is, indeed, more in the vein of a mystery/thriller than a straight-up slasher, but it definitely has a modern tale woven into the storyline. Ten years ago, nobody knew what an “IM” was because they simply did not exist. Nowadays, 90% of the internet population is rabidly addicted to IMing.
The idea to incorporate one of today’s societal fanaticisms was excellent and, more importantly, it works perfectly.
The acting here was nothing special, but this is a film that isn’t designed to showcase aspiring thespians. The characters need to be… well, normal teenagers. And the majority of our twenty-something cast do a fine job at doing just that. It was also nice to see two familiar faces: Jon Bon Jovi and the always-entertaining Gary Cole. Unfortunately, Cole’s character as Owen’s father was not humorous at all – though his cool cockney accent was enjoyable.
Amazingly, this film was shot on a shoestring budget of only $1 million. During its run in theaters, it took in a modest $10 million which may sound like a flop, but it’s actually a 1000% return on investment… a good business deal in anyone’s eyes.
There is a disappointing lack of gore throughout the film, with a little blood drizzled randomly throughout. One might think the small budget had a lot to do with this, but once you watch the film, the reasoning behind the lack of gore turns out to be a necessary one directorially. I can’t say more without spoiling the ending.
And what an ending Cry_Wolf has. Whenever watching these types of films, I think we all try to put the clues together to determine who the killer is. How many times do you pick a character only to change it a few times before settling on your choice? For me, I do it all the time. In Cry_Wolf, I thought I knew who the killer was the whole time. I was sure of it. Until the ending actually came.
The initial conclusion proved to be total garbage… we’re talking April Fool’s Day bad here, folks. And worse of all, my prediction was dead wrong. But that turned out not to be the true ending, as another revelation proved that I was right after all. This comes from left field, but makes sense, and hits the viewer like a high-heater from Roger Clemens.
…but then the film hits the viewer with another shocker, like Pedro Martinez throwing down New York Yankees bench coach Don Zimmer! This final revelation makes my prediction wrong once again, but proves to be a most-satisfying end to an overall great (and original) film.
I viewed the unrated version of Cry_Wolf with “footage too frightening for theaters” included in the film. This amounts to nothing more than an extra 20 seconds over the theatrical version, and probably was just a few extra seconds of gore which would have normally made this film R-rated. In other words, it’s nothing all that earth-shattering.
The extra features included on the DVD are above average, and are fun to watch. The highlight is definitely The Tower of Babble short film, but you should also check out the tour of the set with actor Julian Morris, as well as the director’s commentary. Cry_Wolf hits store shelves Tuesday, December 20th and would make a great last-minute stocking stuffer for the horror-lover in your life!
Flick Figures: Multiple gunshots; minor blood-eating; black-mailing; gratuitous lesbian kissing; multiple stabbings; inappropriate teacher/student relationship; IM-fu (instant message for you web-illiterate folks); one hell of an ending.
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