In short: Wolf Manor (2022)

aka Scream of the Wolf

Up until its last night, a small film crew’s shoot of a cheap-ass vehicle for elderly gothic horror star Oliver Lawrence (James Fleet) has been going as well as you’d expect something like it to go. Which is to say, the star isn’t totally drunk all of the time, and nobody in the crew hates the rest so much you’d have to fear murder, though one supposes you could fix that in post.

Tonight, however, the full moon draws a werewolf to the dilapidated manor (once belonging to an illusionist who disappeared – under mysterious circumstances, of course).

Wolf Manor is yet another entry into the series of mildly self-ironic, very cheaply done, indie horror movies that have been coming out of the UK in the last few years, many of which seem to have curiously similar ideas about how a werewolf is supposed to look. This particular example of the form still in search of a good subgenre name was directed by Dominic Brunt, predominantly an actor who was in 2366 episodes of the soap opera Emmerdale (among other things). Clearly, taking part in front of the soap opera cameras has taught the man something about how to do things quickly and efficiently behind the camera, and so the film at hand may be – and look - cheap but not cheaper than it has to be. Staging and blocking always make sense, continuity is a thing that actually exists, and most shots make a clear effort at creating a degree of an old-fashioned horror movie mood, even though this is not a terribly serious movie, just one that seems to take filmmaking seriously even under non-ideal circumstances.

Many of the jokes about gothic horror clichés and filmmaking on the cheap actually land quite well. There’s little that’s original or new about them, but the film’s approach to irony is light, playful and silly instead of smug, and so left me with the feeling of watching something good-natured. There’s an affability to the whole affair, the feeling of watching a film that may be imperfect but that is having fun doing its best with what it has got.

Everybody here seems to be having a good time, and doing their best to provide the audience with one as well, so I found myself…having a good time, watching Wolf Manor.