By George & Josh Bate
Two subgenres of horror – nature gone rogue and home invasion/survival thriller – converge in the new Fantastic Fest premiere Coyotes, a bloody, funny romp from director Colin Minihan (Grave Encounters).
Coyotes stars real-life partners Justin Long and Kate Bosworth, sharing the screen for the third time. The duo play parents, who, along with their daughter Chloe (Mila Harris), live in the affluent Hollywood Hills when scorching wildfires cause road closures and knock the power out. Disoriented by the fires, a pack of predatory coyotes make their way to the family’s neighborhood, forcing the family and their neighbors into a brutal battle for survival.
There’s a moment in Coyotes that Long’s character has a rather on-the-nose exchange with a character played by Brittany Allen (The Boys, Dexter: Original Sin) about Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. The parallels between Minihan’s film and Hitchcock’s 1963 horror classic are glaring, first and foremost for their transformation of seemingly innocuous animals into vicious, bloodthirsty creatures. Indeed, Coyotes primarily resembles the slew of nature gone rogue features that followed The Birds, such as Backcountry and Arachnophobia, but forges a distinct identity through its integration of multiple other horror sub-genres, namely home invasion and eco-horror. The film interestingly weaves in and out of these sub-genres at different stages of its narrative, even feeling like a slasher at some points.
Coyotes unfolds almost entirely within the confines of the family’s California home and its immediate surrounding area. Minihan engineers an effectively claustrophobic atmosphere in doing so, trapping the family between a rock and a hard place (the rock being blazing fires and the hard place being a pack of wild coyotes). Despite the obvious challenges the family faces, however, the film struggles to achieve true dread and intensity, even when the stakes escalate as the plot progresses. In part, this is because the ‘antagonists’ of choice (i..e, the coyotes) are simply not that terrifying. Some wonky CGI shots aside, the animals don’t ever provoke the fear that the aforementioned nature horror flicks accomplish. The kills may be bloody and will likely satisfy viewers hungry for a gore-fest, but, for the most part, they fail to sufficiently make the titular villains as threatening as they should be. Conversely, when the threat of the vicious beasts looms more in the background and off-screen, Coyotes reaches a much-needed degree of tension, albeit one that often dissipates whenever the animals appear more openly.
This lack of threat is amplified by a number of occasions in the movie in which characters make baffling decisions and ignore opportunities that could potentially liberate them from this hell-on-Earth. All horror movies admittedly require some suspension of disbelief; there’s even something quite engaging about a horror film in which characters make poor decisions and you, as the viewer, feel compelled to shout at the screen and question what they’re doing aloud. Unfortunately though, Coyotes contains too many of these puzzling moments and character choices, leaving one more frustrated with the characters than concerned for their fates.
Greater success is found with the film’s raw family drama. Long and Bosworth share effortless chemistry and make the stranded family easy to root for and care about from the get-go. During their living nightmare, the married couple see their bonds tested in ways that, while not particularly novel for thrillers and horror flicks, possesses an admirable emotional realism. In refreshingly subversive fashion, Bosworth’s character often shines as the hero of the family, making more rational decisions and being a bit more streetwise. Long’s husband character, meanwhile, has a propensity for fainting at blood and comically doesn’t know intuitive things like the fact that a gas heater doesn’t run on electric (much like some of the pokes at millennial’s ineptitudes in this summer’s Together). Long doesn’t go too overt with his character’s inadequacies, instead crafting a lead with very real (and at times, even relatable) vulnerabilities and weaknesses. While not all the attempts at humor work, Long’s comedic timing and facial expressions in reaction to things going on around him make for consistently light and engaging viewing. As evidenced by the number of horror comedies Long has starred in over the past two decades, it is clear that he has his finger firmly on the pulse of what kind of performance such a genre hybrid necessitates. Coyotes is the latest example of the immensely underrated actor’s genre accomplishments.
VERDICT: 6/10
Premiering at this year’s Fantastic Fest, Coyotes fuses nature-gone-rogue horror, eco-horror, home invasion thriller, and even slasher for a bloody, light, and raw romp. Commendable for its weaving together of so many horror subgenres, director Colin Minihan’s film borrows from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and a slew of other similar horror flicks by attempting to transform the seemingly innocuous into something terrifying. Unfortunately, the titular creatures make for disappointingly tame antagonists and seldom provoke fear or tension, although they are responsible for gory kills that will satisfy bloodthirsty horror fans. When the coyotes loom in the background and off-screen, however, the suspense amplifies and time is afforded to a compelling, emotionally realistic, and subversive family drama. Lead actor Justin Long nails his comedic timing with dramatic beats and demonstrates he has his finger firmly on the pulse of what kind of a performance a horror comedy necessitates. The coyotes in Coyotes may leave a bit to be desired, but the movie around them makes for light, engaging viewing.