RECENT WATCHES: Wolves at the Door (2017)

Over the last decade, the American obsession with “true crime” has erupted into a massive industry, fueled by countless podcasts and streaming documentaries. Among all the infamous tales of murder, cults, and disappearances, the story of Charles Manson and his Family remains a persistent point of fascination for many. 2019 was the fiftieth anniversary of the notorious crime and brought with it a wave of films on the topic. They ranged from thoughtful to revisionist to tawdry, prompting much debate and conversation. This was merely the climax of a cultural obsession with Manson and his followers' crimes, which had produced countless books, docs, and films of wildly varying levels of sensitivity over the decades. 

Getting in a few years before the anniversary was "Wolves at the Door," a low budget horror movie directly inspired by the Tate murders. The film would probably be of little note, if it wasn't for a few curious factors. It was produced by Hollywood big shot Peter Safran, released under the banners of Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema. That's because it was directed by John R. Leonetti from a screenplay by Gary Dauberman, the same team that had just made Safran a cool 200 mil with "Annabelle." Furthering the connection, "Wolves at the Door" features a cameo from actor Eric Ladin, reprising the role of the L.A. detective that he played in "Annabelle." The haunted doll movie referenced the Manson killings, directly albeit unofficially placing "Wolves at the Door" within the same cinematic universe as New Line's paranormal horror series. That's not the sole point of notoriety for this otherwise forgotten effort. Some people called it the worst movie of 2017. Which meant I had to give it a look. 

A brief prologue stars Charles Mulkey as half of a married couple that fall victims to the Manson Family's practice of "creepy crawling:" Breaking into a house without stealing anything or attacking anyone but merely to linger around. The rest of the film takes place on the night of August 8th, 1969. Pregnant movie star Sharon goes out to eat with her friends, hairdresser Jay, screenwriter Wojciech, and coffee heiress Abigail. They return to 10050 Cielo Drive, the house owned by Sharon's director boyfriend. The only other people on the property are caretaker William and his friend, Steven. As Sharon calls her husband in Europe, the phone line is cut. As Steve is leaving, he notices the gate is opened before being murdered by intruders. Abigail begins to notice people outside the home but her warnings come too late. The friends are about to fall victim to the murderous fanatics that have been sent to this home on a madman's command. 

Many of the negative reviews of "Wolves at the Door" are not merely bothered by its quality. Instead, people were offended by the approach it took to a real world crime. Leonetti's film plays the Tate murders less like a true crime story and more like a standard home invasion horror film. There's an expected "Based on a true story" tag at the beginning but the script goes out of its way to avoid using the famous last names of its characters. They are just Sharon and Abigail, Jay and Wojciech. As for the Mansonites, their faces are never clearly shown. They exist as faceless threats, generic bogeymen acting without any clear purpose. It's entirely possible, assuming you miss the very beginning and ending, that you could watch "Wolves at the Door" without realizing it's about Tate and the Family. Whether this makes the film more or less tasteless is a matter of debate. No attempt is otherwise made to follow the facts of the case, stripping away any question of verisimilitude. That makes "Wolves at the Door," in effect, a knock-off of "The Strangers," with a slightly larger cast of victims for the intruders to pick off before the hopeless finale. Attaching real names and events, people who actually did live and then die horribly, to a stock parts slasher set-up is definitely a scummy act. I also don't know if that makes "Wolves at the Door" any grosser than the rest of the mini-empire of films, books, docs and God knows what else exploiting the grisly death of Sharon Tate and her friends to sell a product. 

Perhaps the outrage arises from how stripped down an approach "Wolves at the Door" takes. The entire motion picture runs only about 75 minutes. That includes the prologue set before the main plot and the end credits. The scenes devoted to Tate and her friends returning to Cielo Drive before falling prey to the intruders occupy only an hour or so. This leaves little room for character development. The script attempts to build the cast through their interactions. You can see Katie Cassidy and Elizabeth Henstridge trying to turn Sharon and Abigail into actual fleshed-out depictions. The faltering relationship between Abigail and Wojciech, played by a heavily accented Adam Campbell, provides a small bit of drama to the earlier scenes. However, Dauberman's script instead wants to focus on creating suspense by showing the invaders slowly pushing into the home. In other words, a lot of "Wolves at the Door" feels like watching people simply hanging out and doing stuff. They might be okay in a regular slasher flick but... This story has a foregone conclusion, leaving you wondering a bit what the point of this entire exercise is. 

I can only speculate on what that point might be myself. For whatever it is worth, I do think "Wolves at the Door" bugged me a little less than the other John R. Leonetti movies I've seen. It doesn't hammer home obnoxious jump scares as much as "Annabelle" did. A fake-out involving a blender is somewhat well done, actually. It isn't an unfinished mess like "Mortal Kombat: Annihilation" either. In fact, I can see some of Leonetti's talents as a cinematographer shining through. The killers being introduced via prowling shots of their boots stepping out of a truck or a brief glimpse of their hand outside a window are well done. If the script was less barebones, I think a degree of suspense could have been built here. However, as the unavoidable ending comes closer, the visuals become shakier. I think the idea is to increase a grim tension, as Tate and Folgers cry and panic and move towards their ends. Instead, it only increases the feeling that you've wasted an hour of your life watching this not that interesting or good movie. 

Ultimately, the question of why "Wolves at the Door" exists remains more interesting than actually watching it. Quite a few famous songs from the period are played throughout, meaning the movie couldn't have been too cheap to produce. Presumably, Safran and everyone else at New Line Cinema knew what they were doing when they signed off on this. At the same time, the briefness of the movie and the limited number of sets suggests a tossed-off, extremely low budget production. Before the credits roll, "Wolves at the Door" presents real photos and footage of Manson, leaving behind any doubt about whether the filmmakers actually cared about the survivors or victims of the events it dramatizes. Considering the movie was dropped into digital with zero promotion, you feel like Safran and WB/New Line were embarrassed to be associated with a crass exploitation film. Did Leonetti and Dauberman throw this together with leftover funds from the "Annabelle" production or something? If so, why base it on such notorious true events? I imagine there were worst movies released in 2017. At times, "Wolves at the Door" almost works for me. However, this secret, sideways entry into the Conjuring Universe is mostly a strangely futile endeavor, barely feeling like a complete film at times that attaches itself to a hideous crime to gain a fraction of that notoriety. Somehow, it's still a less demoralizing watch than "The Haunting of Sharon Tate," faint praise that may be. [5/10]