Some independent filmmakers have an obsession with reaching that 90-minute runtime. The makers don’t care whether the story actually has the substance to reach that industry favorite and standard 90-minute mark. It’s quite visible that Wolf Garden has an idea that it wants to really milk, but there was no point where I thought, ‘the movie just wound up too quickly’. The movie just behaves as a slow burn for the sake of it, when in fact it would have been much more interesting to explore the idea in a straightforward manner. Director Wayne David, who also stars in the film, is adamant about stretching the story to its breaking point, and sadly, the cover of the plot is blown too soon. The film ceases to be a study of the inner turmoil of the main character and becomes a dragging and obfuscating werewolf tale.
Spoilers Ahead
Plot Synopsis: What Happens In The Film?
The film begins by showing us a couple, William and Chantelle, staying in a cottage, and from the first frame, it’s obvious that something is not right. William keeps having nightmares, and there is a creature he has to feed in a shed in the woods near his cottage. It appears as if Chantelle has no idea what he does outside, but the timelines are jumbled up. At one point, William is seen alone in the cottage, and at other times, he is seen with Chantelle, but as the movie progresses, it becomes clear that something bad happened to the couple while they were in London, and they had to run away to the cottage in order to go into hiding. William sees a newspaper where the news of the police looking out for them is printed on the front page. It was related to a strange animal having been spotted, and William and Chantelle’s disappearance seems to be connected to the creature’s presence.
Who Is John?
William may be living a solitary life, but he gets a call from a man named John, who chides him for having gone out. This is at a point in time when William is not with Chantelle, and he has to explain to John why he went out. Most of the conversation is quite cryptic, and the only inference that can be drawn from their talk on the phone is that John didn’t want William to go out and be seen by people. The reason for that is clear:the police are looking for them, and this implies that he has done something wrong or that he won’t be able to explain himself. John seems to have a lot of authority over William, so this could mean that he was William’s father, who wanted him to stay safe, at least till the police were off his trail. John could also be a friend who worked in the police force and had inside knowledge. Whatever the case, he wanted the best for William and knew the seriousness of the event.
What Does The Visitor’s Visit Symbolize?
William was hallucinating a lot as the movie progressed. He saw ghost-like figures in the woods as well, and later he noticed a man dubbed only as the Visitor coming to see him. The Visitor may be a hallucination as well, but he revealed some things that give us a hint as to what might have happened to William and Chantelle in London. William had been hiding a lot of things in his subconscious, and the Visitor had come to let him know that he had to face them one day. There was definitely a creature in the shed that was not William’s imagination, and the Visitor warned him not to leave it unattended. He did use the collective ‘We’ referring to the three ghost-like figures William saw in the woods and told him that if he killed himself before dealing with the creature, that would be a problem for them.
How Did William Turn Into A Werewolf?
William’s eating habits have to be noted to see that he was switching from oats to a meat-based diet over the course of the movie. One day, after the Visitor had come to see him, William noticed that the creature had escaped. John called William to tell him about the deaths of three people near the woods. He was right in guessing that the creature had escaped. He told William that the police would reach the cottage soon, and he had to do something before that. There was a call from Chantelle’s mother as well, which made it clear that Chantelle’s family didn’t know where she was.
The visitor showed up once again, and William spoke about his desperate situation, which began after Chantelle was attacked by a strange creature before they arrived at the cottage. That was the original culprit, and it may be the same creature that was described in the newspaper. That creature was a werewolf, who infected Chantelle as well, and she ended up killing three people. William had contacted John to get them a cottage, and he came through. Chantelle was the werewolf William had locked up in the shed, but she had found a way out during the full moon when she ‘turned’. The visitor had come to warn William that he had to take the hard decision and kill Chantelle before she harmed someone else. The Visitor had huge scars on his face, which implied he had been attacked as well.
I can add some fantastical theories here: the Visitor and the ghost-like figures William sees in the woods are vampires who are afraid because of the presence of a werewolf in the region, and the Visitor had come to ask William to help. The Visitor showed William the gun that had been there all this time, but William hadn’t yet mustered the courage to kill Chantelle. The ‘we’ the visitor had used earlier was perhaps to refer to the vampire community in the area! The other theory is that the Visitor was Chantelle’s original victim from London, and the figures William was seeing in the woods were Chantelle’s other victims whom he had buried in the woods. He was seeing them, perhaps because of the guilt he was feeling about not having killed Chantelle earlier, which led to more killings.
During Wolf Garden’s ending, William uses the gun and kills Chantelle. The police were nearby, and the visitor told him the final thing: William would turn into a werewolf as well, and he needed to commit suicide if he wanted everybody’s safety. William had a scar on his right arm which he believed to be because of his self-harming tendencies, but the truth he had repressed was that Chantelle had wounded him, which meant he would turn into a werewolf. The realization hit him like a truck, and he knew he had to kill himself, but he couldn’t. It required too much courage. He lets himself become a werewolf, and it seems like the police would have to do the job of finishing him off, although the odds are that he will escape and terrorize the country.
