The buzz around the new Teen Wolf: The Movie proves that the sexy, romantic version of the werewolf is still a big draw for audiences. And there’s a reason that werewolf romance has become strangely popular as a genre on the big and small screens as well as in print in the last few decades: although they’re a long-time horror staple, werewolves usually just aren’t that scary. In fact, the Lycans of the long-running Underworld film franchise are probably the only truly scary werewolves in film.
Most Werewolf Movies Are Scary Despite the Monster’s Appearance, Not Because of It
That’s not to say that werewolf movies can’t be scary. In the hands of a skilled filmmaker who knows how to combine atmosphere, suspense, and the right amount of violence and gore, your movie monster doesn’t have to look all that scary for your monster movie to thrill your audience. Just look at the ultimate monster movie classic Jaws: Spielberg was forced to innovate ways to create suspense and scares without showing the monster because the fake shark looked more goofy than scary.
The body horror involved in the werewolf’s transformation from human to monster can also make for effective thrills. If the werewolf is our main character, he’s typically likable and sympathetic, and by the time the pivotal transformation scene occurs, we’ve gotten attached to him. This is the case for the unfortunate David Kessler’s (David Naughton) transformation in An American Werewolf in London, which is one of the most effective for body horror, as well as that of Gael García Bernal’s Jack Russell in Werewolf by Night, which, like Jaws, takes a less-is-more approach to showing the horror, letting the viewer’s imagination fill in the details.
The look of werewolves on screen is a spectrum, from Teen Wolf‘s barely wolfy Scott McCall (Tyler Posey) on one end to the actual true wolves of Twilight and Hemlock Grove on the other. Most fall somewhere in the middle, with more wolf-like versions like An American Werewolf in London and The Howling lying closer to the Twilight end and more humanoid versions like 2010’s The Wolfman closer to the Teen Wolf end. The problem is that no matter where they fall on the spectrum, they’re rarely actually scary looking.
More humanoid werewolves often end up looking like anthropomorphized teddy bears, like Claude Rains’ original 1941 The Wolf Man. But making them look more wolf-like, as in The Howling, is also ineffective since in the modern era, most people don’t really fear wolves — at least not in the same way that they might fear, for instance, snakes or spiders. Even movies that attempt to make them truly scary looking, such as An American Werewolf in Paris, often end up with something cartoonish instead. And of course in recent years, the trend has been to make them love interests, as in both the original and modern Teen Wolf movies and series, Twilight, and, yes, even Underworld.
‘Underworld’s Lycans Have a Truly Unique Look
The difference in the Underworld Lycans is that they actually look scary, especially the slightly more humanoid Lycans who are able to transform at will. Their design manages to hit the perfect balance between wolf-like and anthropomorphic, making them appear savage and dangerous and also placing them in a particularly creepy part of the uncanny valley. They’re also huge and powerful; they can easily tear apart most vampires, so when they fight against one of the heroes — even the ultra-powerful oldest vampires — we actually believe the hero might die. No vampire dares face one without a weapon, and aside from those vampires like Marcus (Tony Curran) and Selene (Kate Beckinsale) who have enhanced powers of some kind, only the ancient Viktor (Bill Nighy) goes toe-to-toe with Lycans without fear.
There’s a range of looks in the Underworld Lycans, with some having a slightly more wolf-like face than others. All are huge — much larger than a human — but their bodies are basically human-like. It’s the differences between a Lycan’s body and a human body that give them their uncanny quality. Their arms are longer than a human’s relative to the size of their bodies, ending in massive hands with huge claws, and like real wolves, they walk on their toes, forcing their gait into a creepy stalk. That almost-but-not-quite human style of movement is the very definition of uncanny.
The oldest Lycans like William Corvinus (Brian Steele), the first Lycan from whom all others are descended, have more wolf-like faces, with long, narrow snouts, and can no longer turn back into humans. Other Lycans have shorter snouts and flatter faces and tiny, impenetrable black eyes hidden under heavy pointed brows and are, arguably, scarier looking as a result. Neither wolf-like nor human-like, they are, instead, something else — something off the spectrum and truly monstrous. People were still attracted to Michael J. Fox’s Scott Howard while he was in wolf form, but no one is having those kinds of thoughts about the Underworld Lycans.
Underworld‘s only misstep in its werewolf design comes in the fourth film in the franchise, 2012’s Underworld: Awakening. When the few remaining Lycans succeed in creating a giant “super-Lycan” several times the size of an ordinary Lycan, the creature’s long square snout and prominent nose give it a distinctly dog-like appearance which, unfortunately, completely undoes the element of terror the film is aiming for.
In fairness to other on-screen werewolves, it’s hard to impress modern horror audiences. Moviegoers in 1925 might have fainted at the unmasking of Lon Chaney‘s phantom of the opera, but modern audiences are considerably more jaded. Perhaps that’s why the most compelling movie monsters are — and always have been — the ones who are both dangerous and sympathetic. It’s why we return to Dracula and Godzilla and King Kong over and over, and it’s why so many of our classic movie monsters — our vampires, our wolf men, our phantoms, and even our gill men — have made the leap from villain to love interest in modern film and TV. Even Underworld hits this note in its third film, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, which features Michael Sheen‘s Lucian — the first Lycan who can transform from human to monster at will — as the romantic lead and even works to humanize the Lycans who remain in permanent beast mode.
Ultimately, the truly horrifying looking movie monsters — the likes of the Xenomorph, Brundlefly, or Annihilation‘s bear — are a rarity on screen, perhaps exactly because it’s so difficult to design a creature that makes modern audiences scream rather than laugh at the sight of it. But if the result is a climate that forces filmmakers to innovate — whether by designing more unique creatures, by making their monsters more compelling than mindless killing machines, or by building suspense in other ways, Spielberg-style — that’s nothing but a good thing for today’s horror lovers.
