The Canadian horror thriller “Medium Raw: Night of the Wolf”
(2010) is part a compendium of the
genre, and part character study of a rookie cop, Johnny Moran, played by writer
and director Andrew Cymek. The
filmmaker, who is quite young, attractive, and charismatic certainly makes this
his film.
One the “presentation layer”, the film seems like a collage
of “Silence of the Lambs” with “Shutter Island”. But there is a back story: Johnny goes to an Ontario insane asylum to
take out his little sister’s killer. He feels
it is his family duty.
The asylum is run by old codger Robert Parker (William Davis
– and this is not “Richard Parker” from Pi, but rather a man who puts on steel
gear right out of “The Man with the Iron Mask” to become a counter-wolf himself.
Parker controls his “patients” with electric collars, and
their use has led to the faces and necks of all of them getting
disfigured. Johnny’s journey (along with
girl friend and fellow cops) takes
through a menagerie, including at least one female cannibal.
Fifty-two minutes into the film there is a sudden power
failure, which allows the “Wolf” to take control of things. It seems as though the prison’s power system
is controlled by a very hackable computer – or is there an element here of
something like radio frequency electromagnetic pulse?
Gradually, though, the film settles into being mainly about
Johnny’s own journey, and an odd test of his own character. As an alternate ending shows, there is a real question as to whether he should make it.
The film was originally produced for Canadian television,
but an expanded version as film (110 minutes) comes from (Netflix DVD) Anchor Bay (and apparently
Fantastic Films for theatrical release).
The original script (with all the deleted scenes and extensions) was
quite long, maybe 130 minutes, and Cymek was very serious about making this
big.
There film uses sepia and muted colors in many scenes, and
the snow in the outdoor scenes before the asylum looks like falling Kleenex
--- deliberately.
Cymek likes intricate plotting and layering. He probably would relate to my own “Do Ask Do
Tell” sci-fi setting screenplay.
Picture: mine, from "New Canada" (Quebec), Busch Gardens
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