Silent Night director Steven C. Miller‘s latest doesn’t just feature a single werewolf on the prowl, but dozens in action horror movie Werewolves. It’s the type of setup that’s exciting for werewolf fans yet daunting in scope due to the stunts and creature work required.
It’s also exactly what excited Miller about Matthew Kennedy’s script. “The writer just brought it to me pretty early on, and so I fell in love with it instantly,” Miller tells Bloody Disgusting. “I couldn’t believe how much mayhem was happening in the script, especially with the werewolves. I was baffled that we were going to try to get this many werewolves on screen. So, I fell in love with it right away. The process really was trying to find people that actually wanted to make it. Because I’m sure you’re aware that in Hollywood, for some reason, it’s like people don’t want to touch werewolves. They don’t want to do it. So it was very difficult at first to think about who would do this.”
“Luckily,” Miller continues, “I had just made a movie called Line of Duty, and the movie did really well for these producers and Myles Nestel and Craig Chapman at the Solution Entertainment Group, so there was a no-brainer to take it to them, and I knew Myles was a big Alien geek. He likes sci-fi and horror, and I figured he would get it, and he totally did.”
Why is it that, despite their reverence among horror fans, werewolf movies are in such short supply? Miller reflects, “I feel like it’s because they’re either really great or maybe really bad. And I think that the audience sort of judges that pretty heavily early on, even with just the images that come out right away. I mean, that’s obviously something you just expect. But I think the studio is thinking, can they make money? The consensus for studios is that they don’t make money. But you know, hopefully, that trend is changing with not just our movie. But you got Wolf Man. You got a bunch of other cool werewolf things starting to come out, and I think it’s a good time for them.”
Frank Grillo as Wesley Marshall in director Steven C. Miller’s WEREWOLVES, a Briarcliff Entertainment release. Credit: Courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment © 2024 All Rights Reserved.
Werewolves is the type of movie that features a product called “moonscreen,” a lunar light blocking cream meant to protect humans from their mutation triggering when exposed to the Supermoon. That tongue in cheek style of humor along with the action horror reminds of ’90s films like Full Eclipse. That throwback vibe hails from Miller’s horror influences.
“I was looking at a lot of late ’90s Dark Castle movies. I just love that kind of vibe,” he tells us. “And then, obviously, Blade was a big reference for me because I loved the original Blade and how it mixed horror and action. But it was fun. You have a character like Wesley Snipes, who just makes it that much more exciting. Knowing we were getting Frank Grillo, it was important for me to let Grillo be Grillo and let him have fun doing what he does best, which is delivering some crazy lines. Really, just leaning into that was a big thing for me. I do that in general when I’m picking movies, whether it’s Silent Night or things like that, where I love movies that ride the tone. They can be wild fun. They’re sort of crazy and might be a little bit too much, but I like it. Those are all things that I was looking at, but definitely those Dark Castle films, Blade, and even Underworld. Things like that that really hit.”
Director Steven C. Miller’s WEREWOLVES, a Briarcliff Entertainment release. Credit: Todd Stefani / Briarcliff Entertainment. © 2024 All Rights Reserved.
Frank Grillo may take top billing in Werewolves, but it’s Studio Gillis’s werewolf effects and creature work that might be the real stars of the film. Miller, along with SFX legend Alec Gillis, treated this important aspect of the film with the utmost attention and care. Miller explains, “We took several months to even just come up with the design. We had the original sketch artwork done. Then Alec came in and expanded on that artwork, and it’s different to go from art to an actual person being in a suit. You have to accommodate for that. We talked about their legs. We talked about their arms. Would they have elongated legs? Would they have elongated arms? But they knew how much I wanted them to run, how much I wanted them to move.
“Then it just became about making them a little bit leaner, making them able to do more movement. Alec had a version of the werewolves that were completely hairy. Then Alec and I took a razor and some clippers, and we started cutting them down. The next thing you know, I’m giving some abs to make it look brutal. It was a process; we had a lot of fun. I mean, it was me in the shop with Alec every day for months, and we were just enjoying our time together, having fun with the other artists who were making them. Creating different teeth, different ways that they could look, the tongue, and all that kind of thing. We were down to the nitty gritty of their eyeballs, and if I put the eye light on it the right way, would it be yellow? We really focused on a lot of little nitty, gritty things that we had fun doing.”
As Gillis previously explained in an interview with Bloody Disgusting, there may be dozens of on-screen werewolves, but they only had seven Wolf suits with suited actors playing them. Managing seven practical effects-driven werewolves, complete with fully articulated animatronic heads and no shortage of stunt work, presented insane production challenges on their own. But Miller got even more ambitious with it; one memorable sequence involves werewolves attacking in the rain.
Behind the scenes of director Steven C. Miller’s WEREWOLVES, a Briarcliff Entertainment release. Credit: Todd Stefani / Briarcliff Entertainment. © 2024 All Rights Reserved.
“That is easily the most challenging scene sequence we did in the entire film,” Miller confirms. “Because the suits are heavy. But when you add rain, they become even heavier, and then you add the animatronics on top of that. So, we have a little bit of a Jaws shark situation, where sometimes they’re stuttering or not working. Then we’re trying to get them to work. Not only that, but then we put them on wiring, and we have them flying through the air in certain places in the rain. It’s also a whole other level of ridiculousness that we put onto the crew, but everybody was having so much fun that everybody just kept trying to push the envelope. How much could we actually do with these things, how much could we show, and how much would the audience be on the ride? We just kept having fun with it.”
Gillis revealed to Bloody Disgusting that he already has ideas for a sequel to this independent horror film, but he’s not the only one. Miller shares, “We have a lot [of ideas]. Frank Grillo has a lot. Producers have a lot, which is fun that they’re all excited. We all feel like this world should be expanded upon. We wanted to do more in this movie, obviously, but we didn’t have the money. We definitely want to keep going, and I think there’s some really great takes.”
Miller offers up an intriguing possibility if Werewolves performs well enough. “My favorite is to really go more Escape from New York with werewolves. That’s something Frank and I love, and we keep talking about it. We’ve talked about how we can put werewolves on a plane somehow and have a transformation sequence on a plane. There are a lot of really fun things there that we’re trying to figure out. I think we would actually do a really great live transformation if we were focusing on that. But yeah, this is just one of those movies, and I think it has potential if the audience gets out and sees it. It’s just all up to the audience.”
Werewolves howls its way into theaters nationwide on December 6, 2024. While you wait, you can enter to win a custom werewolf head made by Alec Gillis himself!
Director Steven C. Miller on the set of WEREWOLVES, a Briarcliff Entertainment release. Credit: Todd Stefani / Briarcliff Entertainment. © 2024 All Rights Reserved.