The Wolf Of Snow Hollow

And Mass Incarceration As Multimedia Entertainment

As I’ve mentioned about a hundred times now, there were so many movies I looked forward to watching when I got out of prison. But there were also a lot of new filmmakers and interesting voices I was hoping to experience as well. One of them that stood out was Jim Cummings, who wasn’t just a writer-director, but also a capable leading man. Since then, I’ve consumed more than a few Cummings movies, to the point where, when I caught the recent season premiere of “The Righteous Gemstones”, I was less excited by the surprise Bradley Cooper appearance than the appearance of Cummings.

As a director, he seems to use genre in his work to explore idiosyncratic characters, many of whom are testy and anxious and just barely trying to maintain competence. They’re people for whom life is an everyday struggle, and you can sense their sanity is unraveling even before the movie’s struggles hit them in the face. Which makes him a perfect match to star as a sheriff in a small town who has Had It Up To Here just as a werewolf has begun to murder innocents.

In “The Wolf Of Snow Hollow”, Cummings is John, the sheriff of Snow Hollow, a snowy town in Utah where no one ever gets murdered. Until now, where not only are there corpses piling up, but there are also missing body parts. Rumors of the killer being not-exactly-human are not scary to the sheriff, just irritating because now he has to control the narrative. This seems like a product of his anger management issues, but also a canny calculation given that the town is so small that the inquiring media are also registered in John’s Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

John, forever eyeing the bottle, also can’t cope with the pressures of a teenage daughter who is ready to go to college and get out of this small town. His uncooperative ex-wife isn’t helping, though the larger problem seems to be his frankly dangerous fantasies, spoken out loud, about torturing her and making her life difficult. Family is what John clings to desperately, particularly since he is only a deputy sheriff to his father. This part is played by Robert Forster in one of his final roles, and he brings a necessary gravitas to a movie where characters are constantly scoffing at its own werewolf problem.

Cummings the director pulls off a small miracle in this film, in that this is a serious story in a serious world. The movie never winks at its beastly werewolf antagonist, who deals out some gruesome violence, and frankly looks great — this is an A+ werewolf. The victims of the monster are treated with respect by the storytelling, and their memories hurt the bereaved. This approach allows the jokes to stand out, largely due to John’s ongoing exhaustion. Every comic moment makes sense within this world, as if these are the kind of dumb arguments and disputes when a werewolf attacks people in your small town. The extremely talented comedienne Riki Lindhome shows up as one of the cops, and she’s actually quite good in a straight role. Which makes it funnier, of course, when she starts registering annoyance at the various false tips they begin to receive regarding strange behavior around town.

There’s something very white about Cummings’ characterizations, particularly this one. If you aren’t white in America, you tend to be mindful about the spaces you occupy, particularly the heavily-white ones. Even if you rage against them, you are in contrast with a world you don’t recognize as your own. But Cummings, thus far and particularly here, is a very specific and familiar type of white guy. He’s actively trying to be good, trying to represent an ideal – specifically, in this film, he’s trying to live up to the experience and reputation of his father. But he’s also forever in search of that green light to be his worst self. When a suffering survivor of a wolf attack endorses a potential act of police brutality, John has to stop himself from breaking into a grin. The best joke, of course, is in Cummings’ looks, how he appears to be Norman Rockwell-handsome, an All-American Caucasian male with a sharp chin and intense eyes, which is contradicted by his constant, complete lack of composure. It’s a funny film, a brilliant film really, but the best gag is just Jim Cummings walking into any room.

I have been concerned about the specter of ICE massively expanding the carceral state in America. What’s worth understanding is the mindset being employed, that of the need for constant coverage, constant attention, as per the media “teams” employed by the organization. Messaging is, in some ways, just as important (really, more) as actually apprehending people they want to disappear. It’s a show, in other words. A show of force, a show of dominance. But it is a show.

We’ve all been compliant in this, of course. We love a show that promises justice, even if it’s the phony kind. There are more than fifty collective “Law And Order” seasons across the various programs, shows that promise the bad guys more often than not get safely put away after fifty something minutes. I watched a few cop shows for the first time when I was down. “Chicago P.D.” was an otherwise-appalling example of law enforcement getting to do whatever the hell they wanted as long as they had the right hunch that someone was “bad.” And I recall a post-2000 episode of “SWAT” where one officer chewed another out for his police brutality – not because it was immoral or violent, but because he’d end up putting the media spotlight on himself and his colleagues. We spent decades watching “Cops”. This administration knows that the thirst for real justice never beats the unending sight of perps in cuffs being led away into the abyss.

Join us next week for some deja vu – it’s one week of HORROR REMAKES!