Wildling (2018)

Director: Fritz Böhm

Starring: Bel Powley, Liv Tyler, Brad Dourif

A blossoming teenager uncovers the dark secret behind her traumatic childhood.

‘Wildling’ is one of those films I did not find particularly good but not bad either, and one I wouldn’t have missed if I haven’t seen it. It is essentially a coming of age werewolf story. It felt like a pilot episode of a TV series instead of a standalone film.

Bel Powley was excellent as Anna, the werewolf teenager. The set-up was well done: mysterious, interesting, foreboding.  The photography and cinematography is also very well done (although, I believe, most of the actors were shot in front of blue screen anyway, and not on location).  The film is very slow, though, and more a drama about Anna’s slow transformation, instead of it being a werewolf tale. There’s hardly any suspense and very few attacks (except for a few kills during one scene). Then again, I think they probably wanted to make a ‘different’ werewolf film – similar to the Korean film ‘A Werewolf Boy’.

I found Liv Tyler’s acting very dull. She was a very timid character will little to no character development. In fact, the ONLY character who had significant development was Anna. The rest pretty much remained the same throughout the film. There’s a few twists here and there, but in context to the story they didn’t really matter. The ending turned very bizarre and reminiscent of a B-movie.

It was ok for a once-off viewing. I won’t be watching it again, mainly due to the slow pacing.