Wolves at the Door

Set in the late ’60s, Wolves at the Door follows four friends (Katie Cassidy’s Sharon, Elizabeth Henstridge’s Abigail, Adam Campbell’s Wojciech, and Miles Fisher’s Jay) as they’re stalked and eventually attacked by a group of faceless psychopaths. The movie, which is loosely based on the infamous Tate–LaBianca murders (although this isn’t made obvious until the closing credits), admittedly opens with a fair degree of promise, as director John R. Leonetti does a nice job of kicking the proceedings off with a tense, suspenseful home-invasion sequence involving Chris Mulkey’s John and Jane Kaczmarek’s Mary – with the narrative, past that point, seguing into a deliberate yet periodically engrossing midsection that boasts its fair share of creepy moments. It’s clear, then, that the familiarity of the setup isn’t nearly as problematic as one might’ve rightfully assumed, although there’s little doubt, certainly, that the actors’ competent but bland efforts effectively prevent the viewer from wholeheartedly embracing the central characters’ increasingly perilous plight. The perfectly watchable atmosphere persists right up until the antagonists begin their assault on the heroes’ remote home, with the film subsequently adopting an excessively, distractingly generic feel that ensures it runs out of steam long before arriving at its anticlimactic finish – which does, despite containing a refreshing brief running time, cement Wolves at the Door‘s place as a disappointing thriller that could (and should) have been so much better.

** out of ****