The small-town community politics of it all lands a bit on the corny side but Fessenden's specific combination of tender character-driven indie drama and old-school, low-budget unnerving monster movie horror is still an effective one. His last riff on this stuff a few years back was a post-modern war vet version of Frankenstein, this Wolf Man one is a bit more straightforward starring William Hurt's son Alex as a drunken, depressed artist turned hairy, grisly throat slashing killer. The transformation has something to do with the person he was before and after the death of his father (some real pain you can feel Hurt accessing on screen) and maybe some sort of darkness he's allowed in as a result of it, an experience the movie captures by alternating between these sad conversations he has while wandering around trying to fix his relationships and town, and a series of gruesome collateral damage body count setpieces (that image of him holding the bloody woman in the headlights!) for which he knows he will need to bite the inevitable silver bullet for. Not sure it all completely cohered for me but I felt its wounded, defeated sensitivity in the broad strokes and along the way it is expressed well via some goofy and gory practical make-up drenched in blue moonlight. Also features some classic Fessenden quirky periphery supporting personalities and expressive abstract editing choices; as soon as I realized he made the lead a painter I was waiting for that decision to make its way into the form and I was not disappointed.
