While it rehashes plenty of tried-and-told horror stories in places, The Wolf of Snow Hollow is commendable for its intense familiarity. The warm Christmas carols, tree-lined horizon, and cabin journey in the opening feel so familiar atmospherically that it isn’t quite an issue of unoriginality, but the warmth of feeling at home in a video store horror aisle playing with the same tropes and worlds. Out of this select group of worlds that may turn up in horror, this is one of a windy small town, where everyone knows each other.
The first scene and initial werewolf attacks promise a different film than we get for much of the runtime. And while this suspense horror pokes through at times, and returns in gloriously fun full-force at the end, this is largely the story of a bad cop. John Marshall (director Jim Cummings) is deeply flawed, trying to follow the archetype of the heroic solar sheriff, going after a strange killer in a small town he has to keep reminding himself can’t actually be a werewolf.
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Though it follows a group of cops, it goes out of its way not to glorify them or police violence, marking its lead as an alcoholic father with anger issues, who still believes he is this plucky “good cop” the media has led her to believe. John has boundary issues with his 17-year old daughter, telling her to arm herself yet dragging her from a truck with her boyfriend and screaming in the street. He cries in front of her, breaks down, and scares her, and he’s never excused as a struggling father for any of this; it’s clear he’s messed up badly.
It’s up to the viewer whether to view the lead and other cops as properly criticized, or whether you see John as sympathetic, but I personally found him too self-absorbed to appear as a lovingly flawed entry point to the film. The film takes him to his low, violent outbursts, relapses, and a disturbing control over his daughter just make it worrying to sympathize with this man. It’s rather a criticism of what leads flawed men to patch up their insecurities with the power of a gun and badge, with some lines showing the cops joke at civilians not to move too suddenly or they will be shot.
It’s not the good versus evil detective story John believes he is in, but a deeply corrupt policing system that often offers to terrorize the town the same way the werewolf does. This falls apart with the inclusion of what seems closer to a “good cop” in the force, but she is a clear enabler of John and his violent tendencies, making her complicit in this system too.
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The ending is what carries the film back out of shakier territory, a Scooby-Doo villain, and a funhouse of slightly campy villain trademarks in a nostalgic snowy lair. It’s not the trickiest twist, but it’s not meant to be more than fun, as this is, for the most part, an easy murder case for a holiday detective story. The fight scenes there are bloody, much like the earlier kills, but the film never falls out of its comfort-horror niche.
While it falls short of Thunder Road in terms of character, The Wolf of Snow Hollow is a fun, self-critical romp with a great soundtrack from Ben Lovett, and a swan song role for the great Robert Forster. It will be interesting if Jim Cummings completes the trilogy of films following flawed cops, and their egos, and even more if this leaves Thunder Road’s formula. There are times this feels like a Thunder Road monster of the week episode, and other times it feels like an old-fashioned snowy cabin horror in the vein of Wendigo, but the end result is fun, if a bit toothless at times, and easily watchable.
