X
- 2018
- R
- Factory 25
- 1 h 20 m
- 2018
- R
- Factory 25
- 1 h 20 m
Summary Blaise and Nessa are outcast methadone users in their small town. Each day they push a rusty lawnmower door-to-door begging to cut grass. Nessa plots an escape, while Blaise lingers closer to collapse. Tethered to one another, their getaway dreams are kept on a suffocatingly short leash.
Directed By: Ashley McKenzie
Written By: Ashley McKenzie
- 2018
- R
- Factory 25
- 1 h 20 m
- 2018
- R
- Factory 25
- 1 h 20 m
Werewolf
73
5.8
Where to Watch
Summary Blaise and Nessa are outcast methadone users in their small town. Each day they push a rusty lawnmower door-to-door begging to cut grass. Nessa plots an escape, while Blaise lingers closer to collapse. Tethered to one another, their getaway dreams are kept on a suffocatingly short leash.
Directed By: Ashley McKenzie
Written By: Ashley McKenzie
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 9 Critic Reviews
73
89% Positive
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
11% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 9 Critic Reviews
73
89% Positive
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
11% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
This is a raw, intense movie circling on despair, hopelessness and inevitable dead ends. It is about the dark. But in plumbing the pitch black, Werewolf offers the distinct hope of a brighter future – at least, a brighter future for Canadian cinema.
By means of ferociously intimate images, tensely controlled performances, and a spare sense of drama, Ashley McKenzie’s first feature, about two young drug addicts in Nova Scotia, conjures a state of heightened consciousness.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 5 User Ratings
5.8
40% Positive
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
40% Mixed
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
20% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 5 User Ratings
5.8
40% Positive
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
40% Mixed
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
20% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
Really impressive debut feature from a promising Canadian director.
At times uncomfortable to sit through but that's kind of the point. This isn't escapism, this is an unflinching look into the lives of two addict lovers moving in different directions at different speeds.
With minimal dialog, the camera lingers closely to catch every bit of acne, crooked and rotting teeth, soulless stare, and pained expressions caught between shame and despair...really great cinematography.
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Very depressing, needed to watch Paddington 2 to lighten the mood. I look forward to seeing more from this director.
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The film achieves a strange irony, as its formal abstractions serve to heighten our emotional connection to the characters.
Its story may be thin, its characters not particularly original, but McKenzie’s use of cinematic language is savvy and novel, finding complexity where others might find only emptiness.
The performers don’t seem like they’re acting at all, which contributes to the film’s unsettling power. The elliptical narrative structure articulates a sad truth of the addict’s life concerning both the challenge and the tedium of making it through to the next fix.
Werewolf isn’t about addiction’s cruelty. McKenzie has given us a story about an addict’s salvation.
For all her attempts at documentary-style verisimilitude, filmmaker Ashley McKenzie doesn’t really cover much new ground with Werewolf.
It's bleak, I mean it's a bleak existence but with 70 minutes long, the film goes absolutely nowhere. Perhaps for the actors it was a challenge, even if you take into account their robotic performances, but as a viewer, there's nothing you can take with you in the end.
You don't know them, you don't know anything about them, and the narrative never seeks to answer that.
It's just two drug addicts living a miserable day to day, until the story finally stops.
Nothing was resolved, the director simply decided to put an end to it at that time.
This was mediocre.
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