“To Kill the Wolf”: Edinburgh review | Reviews

Creates a mood of lush foreboding

Premiere in Edinburgh, Killing a wolf It lacks major stars, although its fairytale hook might be enough to attract arthouse audiences. It would be unkind to give away the film’s twists, but suffice it to say that Taylor – who gained attention thanks to her 2019 short film Alien: Specimenbased on the long-running science fiction series – touches on sensitive topics while addressing grief, guilt and reconciliation. It is a credit to the first-time director that she approaches these topics with understatement and never inflates her modest story with emotional theatrics.

As the film opens, we meet a stoic Oregon man (Ivan Martin) who lives alone in the woods. (He is identified in the credits as The Woodsman—the audience doesn’t learn his real name until the final scene.) While out for a walk, he makes a shocking discovery: teenager Dani (Maddison Brown), unconscious and suffering from hypothermia. Although he prefers his quiet life of seclusion, he takes her home and nurses her back to health. Dani is reticent to explain why she was in the woods, saying only that she needs to see her grandmother. The Woodsman agrees to drive her there, not realizing that Dani is avoiding telling him the whole truth—or that she’s trying to avoid her aunt (Kaitlin Doubleday) and uncle (Michael Esper), who are caring for her.

Taylor creates a mood of lush foreboding, while Adam Lee’s atmospheric camerawork captures the damp unrest of Oregon’s forests. Killing a wolf is neither a horror film nor a thriller, but the screenwriter and director give the events a supernatural quality that creates an atmosphere of mystery. In fact, everyone hides parts of themselves from the eyes of others.

Based on the chapter headings of the film (‘The Woodcutter’, ‘Grandma’, ‘The Wolf’, ‘Red’) we begin to see the parallels between this story and Little Red Riding Hood and for the most part Taylor skilfully transfers the story into the present. It helps that Killing a wolf isn’t always a faithful adaptation, with the narrative pausing at one point for a long flashback showing how Dani ended up in the woods. But the jumbled chronology and fairy tale parallels are never done purely for cleverness – rather, they bring viewers closer to The Woodsman and Dani, and help us understand the trauma each of them has experienced. Killing a wolf deviates from the original story in terms of plot, but its themes – the corruption of innocence and the possibility that danger lurks around every corner, even in places we thought were safe – remain powerful.

Martin is a portrait of grim resignation as The Woodsman, finding pleasure wherever he can – whether by thwarting a local rancher, sabotaging his brutal animal traps, or fiddling with his most prized possession, a hi-fi stereo. As you might expect, he has chosen to live away from the world because of a shameful memory, but Killing a wolf eventually reveals this information with a pleasing lack of fanfare or theatrics. Martin bears his character’s emotional scars with refreshing straightforwardness, which makes the Woodsman’s decision to help Dani all the more touching. After years of withdrawing from society, he may finally be ready to let someone get close to him.

The flashbacks answer the mysteries of Dani’s past, and Brown is a poignant 17-year-old who has already experienced her share of tragedy. But there’s more to come due to her strained relationship with her aunt and uncle, and Esper in particular shines as a supposed role model who is wrestling with his own demons.

Killing a wolf touches on some difficult subjects, but Taylor and her cast refuse to overplay them or descend into melodrama. The film wisely recognizes that these characters tend not to verbalize their problems, preferring to let their pain simmer quietly. When some passionate outpourings finally occur at the end, they feel not only earned but cathartic.