Evidently, werewolves can be as snobby as anyone. Sure, some humans are turned through bites, but hereditary lycanthropes look down their snouts at them. You will find a large concentration of purebred wolves in Lupine Ridge. It might look like hill country, but it is the Philadelphia Main Line for werewolves. It is there that Cayden Richards will go searching for answers in David Hayter’s “Wolves.”
Richards (Lucas Till) never knew he was adopted until he heard it on the TV news. Having discovered his parents ripped apart wolf-style after an inconvenient blackout, it is now too late for him to ask them any questions.
Resigned to live as a fugitive from justice, Richards simply roams the highways, trying to keep his inner beast in check. However, a chance encounter with Wild Joe, a fellow purebred werewolf outcast, points him toward Lupine Ridge.
As soon as he blows into town, he seems to rub Connor (Jason Momoa), the town’s alpha-male-alpha-wolf, the wrong way. However, a wiry old farmer by the name of John Tollerman offers to take him on as a farmhand, no questions asked. Even the television reports about Richards’s previous misadventures do not seem to throw the good-hearted Tollerman.
Nor does it scare off Angelina Timmons, who ought to be too young to tend the bar she inherited if she is roughly as old as Richards, the high school senior dropout. Of course, the authorities never come to Lupine Ridge, because aside from a few humans like Mr. Tollerman, they are all werewolves.
In terms of tone, “Wolves” aims to be something like the lycanthropic equivalent of “The Lost Boys,” with hit-or-miss results. On the plus side, Momoa’s Connor makes a terrific hairy heavy, and Stephen McHattie has the perfect Lance Henriksen-esque weather-beaten gravitas for Tollerman. Both come into “Wolves” with genre cred that they only further burnish.
