Books & film
Werewolves Within (2021): A Snowbound Town Turns on Itself
Josh Ruben’s Werewolves Within brought Ubisoft’s hidden-werewolf game to a snowbound inn, with a 2021 Tribeca premiere and a June cinema release.
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The snow closes the roads. Suspicion opens every door inside the inn.
Tribeca’s 2021 entry for Werewolves Within introduces Finn Wheeler, a forest ranger arriving in Beaverfield during a divisive pipeline project. A snowstorm cuts off the town, while deaths raise the possibility that something lycanthropic is among the residents.
Josh Ruben directed from a screenplay by Mishna Wolff, with Sam Richardson as Finn and a cast including Milana Vayntrub, Michaela Watkins and Harvey Guillén. The festival listed the film as a world premiere; its director biography gave June 25 as the release date.
The adaptation comes from Ubisoft’s social-deduction game of the same name. That premise puts a useful twist on a monster story. The danger may be concealed in the group, so every attempt to identify it also tells us something about whom the group already distrusts.
A snowbound inn makes that suspicion physical. Nobody can simply leave the argument. A rumor, a grievance or an awkward silence has time to grow teeth before the next piece of information arrives.
The attraction is the closed circle itself: familiar neighbors, an uncertain creature and a place where everyone has to keep sharing the room.
Source
Original winter-mystery illustration; not a Werewolves Within film still.
