Viking Wolf: Her Bark is Worse than Her Bite!

This feature film is touted as Norway’s first werewolf film, and to that fact, it does live up to its title.  It is a werewolf film, and it does involve a Viking back story, but that is where the originality ends and the predictable plot and mundane storyline kicks in.  The movie starts centuries ago while the Viking’s were plundering the Norse coast, they happen upon a locked room in the basement of an abbey which contained a large unkempt wolf.  Flash forward to the present day where we meet Thale (Elli Rhiannon Müller Osborne). She and her family have moved to Nybo after her father passed away and her mother remarries. Her mother, Liv (Liv Mjones) has been hired as a police officer. Thale is having a hard time adjusting to the new life and resents her mother for some unknown, but hinted at, reasons surrounding her father and his passing from an undisclosed illness. Thale steals some beer from the refrigerator and goes to meet some friends, where she witnesses a classmate get dragged away by some animal and she, herself is injured.  As the movie progresses, Liv is in charge of the hunt for whatever did this and her life becomes more and more frazzled as more attacks happen.  Thale also begins to change, experiencing heightened senses and visions.  Throw in a grizzled old werewolf hunter who warns Liv about what is killing the townsfolk, but his warnings go unheeded.  Can the police kill the creature before more lives are lost, and can Liv save her daughter from a similar fate?  Watch and find out!

The scenery and location of this movie are beautiful and some of the camera work is quite good.  The film has a great style with some wonderful imagery and visuals, unfortunately this is mixed in with some uneven storytelling, slow pacing and a predictable plot.  If it were not for the location and the word “Viking” in the title, I don’t think this movie would hit anyone’s radar.  The unique origin of the werewolf in this film is intriguing and had a lot of potential, but besides the beginning and one scene where it is discussed, it really doesn’t play much into the plot.  The wolf effects were also a bit off, not necessarily bad, just not fully realistic either.   The werewolves in this film transform fully into a wolf, a much bigger wolf than would exist in nature, and it is hinted at, that once they transform, they never return to human shape, even after death.

The characters aren’t really that original and there is really no character development. Lots of things are hinted at, but never fully explored, which makes it harder and harder to connect with the heroes.  Thale is the standard disgruntled teen girl who has family issues, but since we never really find out what happened or why she hates her mother so much, it becomes harder and harder to sympathize with her. It is difficult to comment on the acting of this film, since I was watching an English dubbed version, and I would have preferred to have watched it in the original language with subtitles.  Both the original actors and the voice actors seem talented, but sometimes important plot points can be lost in translation, and I got the feeling this was the case here.  I also had a hard time understanding some of the English dubbed dialogue due to heavy accents.  Overall, it isn’t a bad film and has some really nice visuals, but it is slow moving and doesn’t give us much in character development leaving it a hallow addition to the lore.