By David Dent
Wayne David, Wolf Garden’s writer, director and lead actor, originally had another movie planned for his first feature, but a certain Pandemic scuppered that project in favour of a more self-contained, one location movie.
The result, described by David in a recent interview as a ‘werewolf love story’, puts us in the tortured mind of Wlliam, played by the director. William has moved to a cottage in the country, ostensibly to get his head together but also, we eventually discover, to lay low following an unspecified incident.
The forced relocation has been suggested by his supportive and ever-present girlfriend Chantelle (Sian Altman), the house belonging to one of William’s friends. But all is perhaps not as it should be: William is plagued by dreams of howling wolves, and of a certain something living in a shed attached to the house, a something which William is compelled to feed raw meat.
Told in a series of fractured scenes, don’t expect Wolf Garden to coalesce into a tidy conclusion or to be a straightforward werewolf flick; it’s all a bit confused in the telling, which was undoubtedly David’s attention. It’s really a one-person piece, not too unlike an extended showreel, and I suspect that a lot was resolved in post-production; apart from David, Altman is adequate but doesn’t have much to do, and there are bit parts for a couple of other actors (including a – literally – phoned in performance from Jake Eastenders Wood).
There’s some lovely moody photography here and some impressive soundtrack work by Rupert Uzzell, but overall it’s a little too slight and perhaps overambitious given the material on display.
Wolf Garden is available now on Amazon Prime, iTunes, YouTube, Vimeo & Xbox
Bloody Flicks 