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In 18th-century France, a French naturalist and his Native American companion travel into a province that is being terrorised by a dangerous creature.
In trying to cover nothing but horror movies for the whole of this October, I do have to wonder whether or not the ones I choose end up resulting in some serious stretching of the genre's parameters. This was my rationale for watching Brotherhood of the Wolf - not only is its title suggestive of the presence of werewolves (or even just regular wolves), but so is the logline involving a pair of adventurers ending up in a part of the countryside where the local population is ostensibly being attacked by said (were)wolves. Sounds like it's going to be a horror movie, right? Well, not quite. One of the opening scenes does involve a hapless maiden being run down by whatever creature will serve as the movie's main monster, but for a large chunk of the running time Brotherhood of the Wolf plays as a peculiar combination of hyper-stylised action movie and the kind of costume drama that seesaws between stuffy and saucy at the drop of a tri-corner hat. It's at the point where I could focus a synopsis more around the personal drama that unfolds between the various human characters (often on a romantic nature as protagonist Grégoire shacking up with Italian courtesan Sylvia but actually showing true affection in his flirtatious dalliance with local noblewoman Marianne and thus making her brother Jean-François jealous...and so on and so forth) than about whether or not there's actually a wolf (or similar such beast) roaming the area and attacking people.
Even after adjusting expectations away from the idea that this is primarily a horror movie, Brotherhood of the Wolf does little to actually prove an entertaining watch as even an action movie or as a drama or any combination of the three. Scenes involving the creature tend to be blunt and dull even without noting the rough-looking CGI used to bring it to life, which is why it makes sense that the film emphasises its many scenes of hand-to-hand combat between human characters instead. Even those feel like perfunctory attempts to keep an audience awake through the non-action parts as there's nothing terribly exciting about what happens or how it's captured. It's a staggeringly boring affair (not helped in the least by how much downtime there is across its considerably lengthy running time) and nothing - not the reasonably lavish production design nor the elaborate displays of martial arts nor the occasional moment of overt sensuality - ever truly manages to compensate for that. In playing like a fairytale for grown-ups (complete with narrator), it only manages to show off its shallowness and render its rather serious presentation (and attempts at wringing genuine emotion out of its overwrought drama) even more absurd to watch.
#10 - Brotherhood of the Wolf
Christophe Gans, 2001
Christophe Gans, 2001
In 18th-century France, a French naturalist and his Native American companion travel into a province that is being terrorised by a dangerous creature.
In trying to cover nothing but horror movies for the whole of this October, I do have to wonder whether or not the ones I choose end up resulting in some serious stretching of the genre's parameters. This was my rationale for watching Brotherhood of the Wolf - not only is its title suggestive of the presence of werewolves (or even just regular wolves), but so is the logline involving a pair of adventurers ending up in a part of the countryside where the local population is ostensibly being attacked by said (were)wolves. Sounds like it's going to be a horror movie, right? Well, not quite. One of the opening scenes does involve a hapless maiden being run down by whatever creature will serve as the movie's main monster, but for a large chunk of the running time Brotherhood of the Wolf plays as a peculiar combination of hyper-stylised action movie and the kind of costume drama that seesaws between stuffy and saucy at the drop of a tri-corner hat. It's at the point where I could focus a synopsis more around the personal drama that unfolds between the various human characters (often on a romantic nature as protagonist Grégoire shacking up with Italian courtesan Sylvia but actually showing true affection in his flirtatious dalliance with local noblewoman Marianne and thus making her brother Jean-François jealous...and so on and so forth) than about whether or not there's actually a wolf (or similar such beast) roaming the area and attacking people.
Even after adjusting expectations away from the idea that this is primarily a horror movie, Brotherhood of the Wolf does little to actually prove an entertaining watch as even an action movie or as a drama or any combination of the three. Scenes involving the creature tend to be blunt and dull even without noting the rough-looking CGI used to bring it to life, which is why it makes sense that the film emphasises its many scenes of hand-to-hand combat between human characters instead. Even those feel like perfunctory attempts to keep an audience awake through the non-action parts as there's nothing terribly exciting about what happens or how it's captured. It's a staggeringly boring affair (not helped in the least by how much downtime there is across its considerably lengthy running time) and nothing - not the reasonably lavish production design nor the elaborate displays of martial arts nor the occasional moment of overt sensuality - ever truly manages to compensate for that. In playing like a fairytale for grown-ups (complete with narrator), it only manages to show off its shallowness and render its rather serious presentation (and attempts at wringing genuine emotion out of its overwrought drama) even more absurd to watch.