Viking Wolf Proves 1 Film Development Can Completely Change Horror Films
Netflix’s Viking Wolf elevates its supernatural drama by harping on an intriguing film development, which may very well be a game-changer for the horror style.
Regardless of having a well-recognized storyline, Netflix’s Viking Wolf units an instance for future horror movies by making good use of a film development. To set the stage for its supernatural horror drama, Viking Wolf begins with a prologue set within the backdrop of the Viking invasion of Normandy in 1050. The opening scene exhibits a fictional story during which grasping Vikings raid a monastery and uncover a feral wolf in a secret room. After they make the error of taking the wolf with them, “the hound from hell” not solely kills everybody on their ship but additionally finds its method into the Nordic woods.
After establishing the origins of its titular beast, Viking Wolf jumps to the current day and unfolds like a typical werewolf Eighties horror film. From teen wolf transformations to gory motion scenes the place a werewolf wreaks havoc over unsuspecting people, Viking Wolf has all the pieces viewers would count on from a supernatural thriller. What offers it a singular edge is the way it provides a layer of intrigue to its narrative and evokes a viewer’s curiosity with its harrowing quasi-historical opening.
Viking Wolf Follows Prey’s Intelligent Horror Time Setting Change
Many horror motion pictures comply with the well-worn good vs evil narrative, the place the harmless discover themselves at odds with malicious forces. Viking Wolf and Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey are not any exceptions to this. Nevertheless, what makes them stand out is their ingenious timeline shift. As a substitute of solely highlighting the perils and terrifying misadventures of contemporary society in opposition to a malevolent beast, Viking Wolf and Predator film collection’ prequel, Prey, harken again to the previous and provides a glimpse of how historic human civilizations would have handled a grotesque supernatural risk.
Though Viking Wolf‘s major timeline focuses on the current day, it successfully makes use of the previous as a tool to make its central werewolf scarier. Simply as Prey provides extra heft to Predator‘s lore with its time setting shift, Viking Wolf permits viewers to understand werewolves from a distinct lens by giving its mythology a Nordic basis. This, in flip, makes Viking Wolf much more memorable than it might have been with out the Viking backstory and continues an thrilling horror development.
Why So Many Historic Horror Films Do So Properly
Past Prey and Viking Wolf, many different horror motion pictures like Interview With the Vampire, The Girl in Black, The Conjuring, and Robert Eggers’ The Witch and The Lighthouse have unsurprisingly benefited from interval settings. The going-back-in-time components appears to constantly work so properly for horror motion pictures as a result of it provides a semblance of realism that dwells on the primal sense of human concern. For example, The Witch avoids depicting its titular malevolent pressure as a pop-culture-appropriate, long-nosed, broomstick-riding girl.
As a substitute, the Robert Eggers film grounds its lore within the early historical past of documented witchcraft, which is much extra scary than the watered-down depiction of witches in fashionable backdrops. Equally, Prey brings a inventive twist to a well-recognized story by spinning a complete new historic yarn into all the pieces from the tradition and gender of its protagonist, Naru, to the modus operandi she makes use of in opposition to the overpowered Predator. Since so many motion pictures like Prey, The Witch, and Viking Wolf are succeeding through the use of this new horror film development, it’s evident that historical past and its social constructions generally is a meaty supply of unchartered concern and apprehension in cinematic storytelling.
