Horror and Werewolves. Can they ever part?

[Fastenjaw]

I believe that I have read in the synopsis somewhere that the film will have dark horror elements in it... I'll be honest when I say that I have very little faith in ANY werewolf film that has horror in it. I think it stems from having all the unearthly demonic sounding, ugly as hell monstrosities running around and killing innocent people from the +90% other movies out there. Gladly there has been acknowledgment from the staff and the forums on this overplayed theme. That is good cause that means the days of the big bad wolf are are gone. That is the main reason why I hope this will be a film that I actually want to see. I have only see 3 other werewolf flicks and they are ALL BIG DISSAPOINTMENTS.

I would prefer the film was loaded with suspense instead of horror (like Jurassic Park 1). That film was VERY VERY COOL! The dinosaurs didn't look like monsters. The outright REALISM is what brought the film such a profound level of action and suspense.


The demonic evil sounds they make along with their seemingly overly heinous behavior really irks me. That theme is one thing I truly dislike. Yet we see that all too often. It either manifests itself in the look or the behavior of the beast itself. Even the transformation scenes are made very unnatural and ungodly. Yes they are fantasy creatures. Yes they are unearthly. But do they really need to be so laden with demonic themes?

Now I do agree that there should be a battle to control the beast from within. I just dislike how the beast is always a roaring blood thirsty animal from hell. As opposed to a more instinctual, unpredictable and intelligent animal. This is one aspect I would really like to see explored. The instinctual aspect. Make me want to see them and their nature. Make them look beautiful while still possessing that level of suspense like in JP. Don't hide them behind smoke and trees. Don't be afraid to make them visible half way into the film. If they can do that, then I will be happy to watch the film. I can only hope this will be the case.

[JoshuaMadoc]

It can part anytime, anyplace, by anyone.

But you need to realize that "safe" is much easier than the more ambiguous "right". The more familiar people recognize werewolves from the stale lard they've been spoonfed all these years about them, the safer it is, the more casual viewers it would attract. It's just all too easy and quick, it's like selling big macs in differently drawn wrappings.

But if you want to attract viewers who initially do not recognize the werewolves in your movie because of the deviations of their portrayal -- either because you were taking notes from an indefinitely-sized fanbase, or you're portraying them in your own vision, i doubt the overwhelming number of ingredients alone would be enough. I'm sure this is what most filmmakers, no matter how obnoxious and unrefined, almost always go through.

[ravaged_warrior]

Good horror films tend to have suspense. That's usually what makes them work.

And there are good werewolf horror films, such as The Wolf Man and An American Werewolf in London. I don't think that ignoring the horror films with werewolves is any more open-minded than ignoring the non-horror films with werewolves.

[Terastas]

In some instances, they already have. The werewolves in Dungeons & Dragons and Harry Potter were dark, but I wouldn't consider them to be elements of horror.

A better question would be whether or not werewolves will ever not fit under the "monster" description. That I have some serious doubts about, mostly because were you to trim off all the monstrous features of a werewolf, what you'd have left wouldn't really be a werewolf, and would probably be referred to instead as a shapeshifter or an anthro. So while I do think werewolves stand a good chance of breaking away from their horror routes, I doubt we'll ever see them without any darker elements involved.

[Aki]

I believe that I have read in the synopsis somewhere that the film will have dark horror elements in it... I'll be honest when I say that I have very little faith in ANY werewolf film that has horror in it. I think it stems from having all the unearthly demonic sounding, ugly as hell monstrosities running around and killing innocent people from the +90% other movies out there. Gladly there has been acknowledgment from the staff and the forums on this overplayed theme. That is good cause that means the days of the big bad wolf are are gone. That is the main reason why I hope this will be a film that I actually want to see. I have only see 3 other werewolf flicks and they are ALL BIG DISSAPOINTMENTS.

Dark horror probably refers to the "Bad guy" werewolves.

Freeborn's wolves have free will. They can be as good or as Big Bad Wolf as they please.

And the Big Bad Wolves in Freeborn gotta be scary, no? So they're gonna be scary. And that's horror. I'm not entirely sure what "dark horror" is, but I imagine it's "More scary" horror. With blood and guts and everything.

And, good or evil, werewolves excel at blood and guts.

[RedEye]

Can Werewolves and the Horror continuum be separated? Yes. Kitetsu has the idea: Werewolf/Horror/Gore/Blood flicks are just Big Macs in different wrappers.

Movies tell a story. There are a lot of "Writers" that stick to the "Formula" because it works-not because it is good, clever, or well done.

There will be horror in Freeborn, if in no other form than seeing yourself turning into an impossibility, a beast-man/woman, leaving your "Humanity" behind. That's the unknown; and it terrifies us, yet we seek it. It means having to re-define your concept of what "Human" is: a mind- or just a body? It is an irreversible change; you will never be the same person you were before...
It is DEATH with an incomprehensible re-birth.

As the story goes; it is also a triumph: of love, over all else. Whatever you have become, there is still love. There is still humanity; enlarged and evolved. The YOU is still there: with new facets-greater heights and depths-but you are still you: as long as you are loved, and able to love in return.

Horror can also be enlightenment... your call as to which.

[Scott Gardener]

This is perhaps a spin-off of the "are we ruining werewolves" thread, though it is also in many ways its counterargument.

Can werewolves and horror be separated? Yes. It's simply a matter of imagination.

Should they be separated? This is a bit more controversial. I think the horror aspect will be there in the subconscious, but I would happily be the first to break the dogmatic connection if I had to.

Will they be separated? Yes. Sooner or later, someone will do it. It's already been done in fan writing and in some published novels. The lack of separation only exists to the mainstream.

[Defensorem Lupus]

Finally, I found it . . . YES!!!!!!!!!! They SHOULD, no HAVE to part because it is just outright not good saying that all supernaturals (werewolves included) are pure evil, everything is good and evil, the ying and yang. It is an internal war going on between the angel and the devil that stand on your shoulders. It all matters and comes down to which side wins at any given moment.

I had to let that one out, I have been looking for a topic like this for ages . . .

[Scott Gardener]

We can have horror stories in which werewolves aren't evil. Certainly, there are at least a handful of horror films already out there in which some werewolves aren't evil. Most of such films are so bad--Howling III, Lycan Colony, and Darkwolf are key examples--that one suppresses memory of much of it in order to protect the stability of the conscious ego.

But, werewolves playing prominent roles (as opposed to drop-in bit parts like Big Fish or Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) in something other than horror is almost unheard-of, with the exception perhaps of Teen Wolf, a classic coming-of-age eighties cliche movie. Comedy by design lampoons other genres, so a werewolf comedy isn't a big leap, but even that idea has been done less than half a dozen times.

By comparison, there's plenty of vampire comedies and oodles of vampire horror films, but with a bit of searching, there's also vampire dramas, vampire cop shows, and a soap opera.

[Berserker]

On the other hand, vampires have a horror component by their very nature. At least werewolves have the potential to be separated from horror. I don't think that's possible for vampires.

[RedEye]

Agreed: Vampires are scavengers of the living, seeking the life force in their victim's blood to prolong their own lives after death hatried to claim them.
Werewolves on the other hand are capable of nearly anything; from ripping people apart to leading a lost child back to their parents.
Werewolves have potential; vampires don't. Then there is the fact that a Werewolf could eat a steak rather than your leg, making them less a predator on humans than vampires; who just see humans as walking lunchboxes...or would that be drink boxes?

[Howlitzer]

juice boxes perhaps?

[Blue-eyes in the dark]

Agreed: Vampires are scavengers of the living, seeking the life force in their victim's blood to prolong their own lives after death hatried to claim them.
Werewolves on the other hand are capable of nearly anything; from ripping people apart to leading a lost child back to their parents.
Werewolves have potential; vampires don't. Then there is the fact that a Werewolf could eat a steak rather than your leg, making them less a predator on humans than vampires; who just see humans as walking lunchboxes...or would that be drink boxes?

or rather blood squeeshies.

[Howlitzer]

heh....

hehehe....


this just reminded me.

like, a little over a month ago I was in school and i got a rather massive nosebleed....so I went to the bathroom to wash up... and there were no paper towels anywhere. So I pretty much bled all over the bathroom while looking for something to use, then i left a trail of blood to the nurses office out of spite for our school's cheapness in not properly stocking up on paper products while still being able to afford new computers for the elementary school.

And due to a lack of communication, when the janitors got called to clean up, nobody knew where the blood came from. >.<

[ghostfang]

put a red meat steak in a cage made out of silver >_>

[Berserker]

put a red meat steak in a cage made out of silver >_>

Wrong thread.

[Scott Gardener]

Vampires have horror built into them, and yet they've managed to get out of the horror position a lot more quickly.

I can now remember at least two incidences of werewolves outside of horror beyond comedy.

1. Ladyhawke, a fantasy movie. Not a typical werewolf, and indeed the word "werewolf" never comes up. Rutger Houer's character has a curse that more resembles werewolf legends of old than most more biologically driven modern werewolf movies.

2. Very obscure and dimly remembered, an episode of the 1980s version of the Twilight Zone, the one done in Canada; two characters escape through some sort of metaphysical portal. I can't remember whether it was a book, a mirror, or what it was. But, when they did, they emerged as wolves. The presentation was very metaphysical, and again, the ideas of werewolves and lycanthropy weren't mentioned.

But again, just off the top of my head, there's a vampire soap opera (Dark Shadows), a vampire cop show (Forever Knight), and a plethora of comedies. (Love at First Bite, My Best Friend is a Vampire, etc.)

[Wselfwulf]

Some good points have been raised here. I think they can be separated, but shouldn't, otherwise all we'd be left with is Wind in the Willows-esqe anthropomorphic characters, or worse, a complete normalisation, an arbitraryness really.

Coming to terms with savagery, particularly inner savagery, is part of the werewolf mythos. It can be an effective metaphor for any number of conflicts a person has with themself or others. I don't this is limiting as literarily, as conflict underlies almost all narritive.As far as films go, werewolves are an emblem of the horror genre, like zombies. I don't think you could separate zombies and horror. Although, I suppose, zombies in film have been alot less thematically variant than they could be. Er, but werewolves haven't, even in films that strongly retain their horror element.

[Terastas]

Zombies figure more prominently today in action-horrors and survival-horrors, but they're still horrors. The same would be true of the vampires and werewolves Scott mentioned in comedy-horrors; they're predominantly comedies, but they still intentionally include elements of horror.

It probably would be too much to expect werewolves to ever be completely separated from horror, as most movies in modern times do not restrict themselves to one genre and one alone, but blend one predominant genre with elements of others. One could argue that classic action flicks like Predator and Terminator had just as many, if not more elements of horror in them than action flicks featuring classic Hollywood monsters like Blade or Underworld. Hollywood has essentially rolled action and horror together to create a sort of all-encompassing "suspense" description.

So before you can ask if werewolves can ever be separated from horror, you might want to ask yourself what it is that defines horror. Putting a werewolf in a movie that is not predominantly horror is easy enough (and has already been done), but eliminating horror from the werewolf image altogether I don't think can be done at all.

[Merrypaws]

I'd say that we would first need an ironclad definition for 'horror' before we can decide whether werewolves need such elements or not.
By definition, 'horror' means an overwhelming, sickening sense of fear. But not all people are afraid of the same things. Like, well, werewolves. Most people on this board are very much intrigued by the thought of turning into something other, letting the inner beast out, but to some people it might be absolutely horrifying.

Defining the world by movie genres is subjective at best.

[Dreamer]

Well, I was wondering, what about the possibility a villainous character who's of our type of were, basicaly a sociopath who can change at will and retains his human mind when transformed. Basically a fuzzy sharp-toothed Hannibal Lecter. That would actually be way scarier than the other kind.

[Terastas]

Well, I was wondering, what about the possibility a villainous character who's of our type of were, basicaly a sociopath who can change at will and retains his human mind when transformed. Basically a fuzzy sharp-toothed Hannibal Lecter. That would actually be way scarier than the other kind.

It's still horror.

[RedEye]

There is also the problem that most all "Horror" movies are more properly "Fright" movies than "Horror" flicks. There is no real attempt to subject the audience to "Overwhelming, sickening terror"; rather it's more a matter of introducing a "Boo!" moment in the picture now and then.

"Dog Soldiers" for example, uses the Werewolf to shock the audience for a few seconds before the action takes over... In most cases, you could more correctly refer to "Horror" movies as "Frightening Action Movies" rather than actual horror films. There is ONE scene in that picture where we see two of the Wolves and a woman who is beginning to shift full on, and they are less frightening than curious for the most part.

One of the paradigms of real horror is the sense of hopelessness, and none of the current crop of horror flicks manages to do that. Instead you start anticipating how the protagonist is going to beat the odds and survive; since that has almost become a "must do" in these pictures. Real horror in these films would have to show that the hero will die, slowly and terribly and without hope.
And that would kill the film right there. Nobody is going to pay to see someone lose; people want winning, even if it makes no sense in the story.

[Wselfwulf]

heh, dog soldiers was good. I think the protagonists isolation and the element of unknown danger lend it at least somewhat to the posited horror definition. But does that make 'the cube' or 'eraserhead' horror? Those movies have little action, but plenty of overwhelming elements of fear. Or purely disturbing in 'eraserhead'.

[RedEye]

heh, dog soldiers was good. I think the protagonists isolation and the element of unknown danger lend it at least somewhat to the posited horror definition. But does that make 'the cube' or 'eraserhead' horror? Those movies have little action, but plenty of overwhelming elements of fear. Or purely disturbing in 'eraserhead'.

The Cube is classic horror. You realize eventually that there will be no survivors, and that winning is impossible; giving rise to hopelessness.
The struggles of the people accentuate this. It's very well done as classical Horror.