Angela Carter

(In French, On Cable TV, April 2020) Moody, dark, stylish, gauzy and fantastic more than horrific, The Company of Wolves takes a far more dreamlike (and female-gaze-friendly) approach to werewolf horror than most of its contemporaries. Director Neil Jordan works from an Angela Carter script (adapting her own short story) and delivers a collage of striking images loosely based on the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale, except with more hairless male chests and werewolves running around. Creating a misty, gothic atmosphere on a limited budget isn’t without visible seams, but Jordan makes it work. Unusually enough, the script doesn’t settle for a clear narrative as much as a mixture of episodes and shorter stories bound together as a sort-of-anthology within a realistic framing device, further adding to the surreal, oneiric feeling of the entire film. Its closest recent equivalent may be Catherine Hardwicke’s work on Twilight and Red Riding Hood. Interestingly enough, in retrospect, The Company of Wolves is a closer fit to the fantasy film boom of the early 1980s than the horror movies of the time. Fortunately, that still ensures its distinctiveness today.