13 Nights of Shocktober: The Company of Wolves

by A.J. 

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 6: Werewolf Party Night, "As you're pretty, so be wise/ Wolves may lurk in every guise/ Now as then, 'tis simple truth/ Sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth."

The Company of Wolves

The Company of Wolves, released in 1985, is a fantastically dark and surreal fairy tale about the dangers lurking in the deep, dark woods for young girls, especially ones that wear red hoods and venture to grandmother’s house, but this movie is more than just an adult reworking of Little Red Riding Hood. Directed by Neil Jordan and co-written by Jordan and Angela Carter, from Carter’s story of the same name, The Company of Wolves brings to the forefront the warnings and hidden truths that make fairy tales a fount of childhood nightmares. The entire movie itself is one young girl’s nightmare. 

The film begins at a home in the English countryside but quickly moves into the dream of teenage Rosaleen. Her dream will more than once slip into nightmare territory. No part of the peasant village or the woods where her dream takes place ever feels entirely safe. There is no specific time period for the village setting; it seems to take place “once upon a time…" Everything about her dream, and thus the movie, feels simultaneously familiar and strange. Everything feels like a distorted reflection of a waking counterpart. As her dream begins we see her sister being chased by wolves running past distorted, surreal versions of thing in Rosaleen's room, like the giant stuffed bear that tries to grab her.

Rosaleen spends much of her time with her Granny, played with great but subtle authority by Angela Lansbury, listening to her stories. Granny is full of wisdom both practical (never eat a windblown apple) and cryptic (never trust a man whose eyebrows meet, he’ll show his true nature in the moonlight). She never hides the darker side of life from her granddaughter. Granny begins her stories with, yes, “once upon a time…” When Rosaleen asks if a young bride and groom in a story live happily ever after, Granny replies quickly, “Indeed they did not!” The groom showed his true beastly nature on their wedding night.

Because The Company of Wolves takes place in a dream, many things are possible and it could delve into the wildly fantastic but it is smart enough to restrain itself. The village and surrounding dark woods were built and shot on soundstages and though everything looks clearly artificial it all feels right for Rosaleen’s dream. The sets are dark, nightmarish, and macabre, but also familiar. Since the setting and characters are from the realm of the familiar, we are jarred when the surreal and macabre poke into Rosaleen’s world. She finds that an egg in a bird’s nest hatches into something made of stone. Rosaleen’s father returns from hunting and killing the wolf that killed her sister with its severed paw of as a trophy. It was a paw when he took it, he says, but the trophy has turned into a human hand.

This is a different kind of werewolf movie. It seems that any man can change into a wolf and any wolf can change into a man, not because of a bite or a curse, but because of their true, hidden nature. There is a confrontation at the climax of the film when Rosaleen sets off to Granny’s house in her red hood and on the path meets a man whose eyebrows meet. It plays out very differently than the traditional fairy tale. The words of Rosaleen’s mother echo through the final act: “You pay too much attention to your granny. She knows a lot but she doesn't know everything. And if there's a beast in men, it meets its match in women too.”

The Company of Wolves is a wonderful nightmare. I’ve seen very few films that successfully convey how a dream can feel completely bizarre and utterly real at the same time. Everything makes sense as it is happening even if you don’t know why or how it is happening or what will happen next. You might think that because the movie is a dream there is no weight to the scenes or no real danger to Rosaleen. However, every encounter and experience Rosaleen has are rooted in very real fears and anxieties that the sleeping adolescent Rosaleen likely does not yet fully understand. Even if they came to her in a dream, the lessons of Granny’s stories are very real. This is horror that does not make you jump out of your seat or shut your eyes. This is horror that wants to disturb and stir the thoughts buried deep down in your mind.