The 2001 French film Brotherhood of the Wolf is a fantastic, genre-bending examination of the true story of a mysterious beast terrorizing an 18th-century French province. For the first half of the film, we’re left to speculate along with the characters as to who or what is responsible for a series of gruesome murders, primarily of young peasant women. The film’s style owes much to Hong Kong action cinema, with breathtaking slow-motion Kung Fu fight sequences, frequently in the rain, sometimes with birds flying past for emphasis. Early on, peasant girl La Bavarde (Virginie Darmon) is accused of witchcraft, hinting that there may be a supernatural basis for the mysterious, vicious beast. After all, if this film suggests a time and place where witchcraft is real, it’s a short logic leap to the existence of werewolves or worse. And the more time we spend with the film’s main female character, society lady Marianne (Émilie Dequenne), the more she begins to seem a likely suspect as the werewolf’s human alter ego.
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