This cabin-in-the-woods adventure won’t have you howling with excitement. Out Come the Wolves (2024) starts with a familiar setup, a group of friends, a remote cabin, and a pack of snarling predators, leaving us hopeful for something fresh and unexpected on this feral ride. Instead, it has all the feel of a TV movie, bogged down by a limp love triangle and a serious lack of urgency to deliver anything noteworthy.
We follow Sophie (Missy Peregrym), our would-be heroine, as she drags along her fiancé, Nolan (Damon Runyan), and her suspiciously close bestie, Kyle (Joris Jarsky), on a hunting getaway, partly for Nolan's work, partly to reconnect, but also because she really wants to introduce Nolan to Kyle and have them bond.
Nolan, the odd one out in terms of outdoor skills, has tagged along because he's a city-slicker and writer in search of inspiration, with a food column to fill for his readers. He's here to become one with nature and learn, through new experiences, how food makes its journey from the wild to the plate.
The movie has Sophie trapped between two men, each clawing at her heart for what feels like an eternity as she seems to secretly bask in the attention. Nolan, the fiancé, pouts and stares, his green eyes burning with jealousy over Sophie’s playful interactions with Kyle. The tension, fueled entirely by jealousy, is so dull and lifeless, it’s a lot like watching paint dry, tedious, pointless, and almost painfully slow at times.
The script paints Nolan as the villain in this romantic squabble, but Kyle’s no saint either, masking his own jealousy while also lying about bringing his girlfriend so he could get closer to Sophie. The kicker in this aftermath? Nolan’s forced to lean on Kyle’s hunting expertise the very next morning to nail his food article. However, this drawn-out melodrama chews up the runtime, leaving you desperate for the wolves to crash this soap opera and finally get the real horror show started.
The creators rolled the dice on a love-fueled feud to stoke the movie’s tension, but both Nolan and Kyle are sketched as such insufferable, petty brats that you’re practically rooting for the wolves to make quick work of them.
Sophie, Peregrym, was supposed to be the star of this wolf-ravaged tale, her poster-girl status seeming to promise a badass heroine who could claw this movie out from the jaws of mediocrity if needed. In reality, she’s mostly a sidelined character, while her two jealous, feuding male counterparts take center stage. We wanted a lot more of Sophie, but even when she does come on screen, her scenes land with a mostly dull thud, drained of the fire we were hoping for. It’s as if the script forgot how to write a hero.
The problem is, none of these characters ever find their stride, stumbling through the movie like lost hikers with no map, their shallow arcs so thin they barely register, leaving you not really caring about any of it.
Okay, so where’s the silver lining in this feral tale? Look no further than the true stars of Out Come the Wolves are the savage wolves themselves, who sink their fangs into the movie and drag it out of the human-drama doldrums.
While these furry fiends inject some much-needed energy into the mix, their ferocity feels somewhat shortchanged. Shaky camera work hides the real carnage, though the little we do see does impress, and a limited variety of attacks sadly clips their claws on this one, making us crave more wolf-on-human action. It’s all too sparse and spaced out, as we’re left longing for the kind of grand, feral hunt that never quite arrives.