Netflix's 'Viking Wolf' Is a Paint-By-Numbers Werewolf Movie

By Nate Parker | Film | February 7, 2023 |

By Nate Parker | Film | February 7, 2023 |

Fact: Werewolves are scarier than vampires. It’s true. When ranking modern movie monsters it goes werewolves > evil children/dolls > fast zombies > vampires > Frankensteins > slow zombies. Dietary restrictions are not frightening when pallid college students lurk in vegan, gluten-free bakeries around every corner. But werewolves are something different. A chaotic force of nature red in tooth and claw, forced by its inhuman rage to kill and devour any animal or human unfortunate enough to cross its path during a full moon. The rest of the month its human half is left wallowing in guilt for their past misdeeds and dreading what’s to come. The first hint of sunlight makes even the most powerful vampire burst into flames faster than a ginger who forgot sunblock. Your average werewolf is 200+ pounds of tooth, claw, and rage bearing down on you like a roided-out linebacker, and won’t stop for anything but a silver bullet. So why is it so hard to make a compelling werewolf movie or show? Because Netflix’s Viking Wolf is only the latest to waste its shot.

It starts out promising enough. Viking Wolf — or Vikingulven in its native Norwegian, which at least sounds cool — tells the story of an ancient curse locked away by European Christian monks over 1,000 years ago. Vikings raided the abbey, and the first werewolf returned with them to Norway’s shores, but not before devouring every man aboard. It then ran into the woods, where it spent the next 10 centuries devouring peasants and lost asylum seekers. Fast forward to 2022, and New Girl Thale (Elli Rhiannon Müller Osborne) has just moved from Oslo to a sleepy little seaside town called Nybo with her family. It’s so dull that local landmarks don’t even have names. The bay is called “The Bay” and the beach is “The Beach.” Her mother, Liv, is the town’s best cop thanks to a department full of Barney Fifes but has difficulty connecting with her oldest child. Her step-father, Arthur (Vidar Magnussen), does… something, one assumes. Her deaf and mute little sister, Jenny (Mia Fosshaug Laubacher), is the only one Thale feels close to. But she’s trying, and so when she’s invited out to party in the woods by Cute Boy Jonas (Sjur Vatne Brean) she steals some beer and heads out. Her night of awkward flirting takes several dark turns, unfortunately. The first is fairly common; turns out most of the other kids are jerks. The second is less so, as Thale witnesses the Mean Girl get snatched by something in the woods, something too fast to see that kills Mean Girl Elin and superficially wounds Thale in the process.

From there Viking Wolf is equal parts family drama and puddle-deep crime scene investigation, with the occasional jump scare thrown in for good measure. Thale experiences incremental changes that we know are changing her into something else, but she doesn’t tell anyone about them. Liv reluctantly reaches the same conclusion thanks to traveling werewolf hunter Lars — imagine a one-armed Bobby Singer but without the charm — and must decide what to do with a daughter discovering a taste for human flesh.

It sounds more interesting than it actually is, unfortunately. It hits most of the typical werewolf movie high notes, from the first kill to the big reveal, but it feels very rote. I can’t fault Thale or Liv; both are excellent as women coming to terms with the horror scratching at their door. Thale in particular excels at looking so wounded she seems more fawn than wolf. She’s struggling to feel normal in a town where she’s ostracized by almost all her fellow teens for no obvious reason. It’s the story and curious lack of violence that’s to blame. The story is as spare as it can be. Why is the pretty new girl disliked? We don’t know. Why does this little family feel so broken? No clue. The best example arrives early on when Thale is asked why her family moved from Oslo. Thale answers, “I killed someone.” Is she making a joke? Taking the blame for her father’s untimely death? Did she accidentally hit someone with her car or deliberately shoot someone? Your guess is as good as mine because the writers never bother to tell us and it doesn’t affect Thale’s general attitude or behavior. It becomes a throwaway moment in a movie full of them. It’s a shame too because Viking Wolf’s Espen Aukan also wrote Netflix’s much more entertaining Troll. Maybe writer-director Roar Uthaug gets the credit for that one, because here Aukan and director Stig Svendsen fail to bring the tale to life. Even when the original werewolf reveals itself and Thale loses control of her infection, the action remains offscreen. We see the dismembered body parts that remain, but there’s almost no werewolf combat. Even when the creature cuts a bloody swathe through the center of town, we mostly see the aftermath. This is no Dog Soldiers or Ginger Snaps. Even the ending, which at first is reminiscent of 2007’s The Mist’s bleak finale, is undercut by a tacked-on epilogue that feels like a coward’s way out. The scares aren’t scary and, apart from Thale’s relationship with her mother, the entire thing feels without consequence. I’ll give them credit for a much better CGI werewolf than Wolf Like Me provided, and the subtle effects as Thale’s gradual change takes hold are good. It’s too bad we don’t see more of them in action.

The werewolf’s tale is one of nature’s distilled hostility towards man and the thin shroud of civilization that hides the animal inside us. And Viking Wolf takes place in a stunning corner of the world, where fairytales hide behind every tree and in every cave. It’s a shame we don’t see more of that world rather than the cold blue light of a Scandinavian crime drama that just so happens to feature a lycanthrope.