The Wolf of Snow Hollow

In Snow Hollow, a ski town up in the Utah mountains, every full moon leaves a body in the snow. That's the setup for 'The Wolf of Snow Hollow', Jim Cummings's second feature after 'Thunder Road', and once again he writes it, directs it and puts on the police uniform himself. There's a werewolf in it, but the tone sits closer to a bloody black comedy than to classic horror, and more than one critic brought up 'Fargo'.

John Marshall is the deputy sheriff, and he's not doing well. He's trying to stay off the booze, he has a nasty temper, he can barely talk to his teenage daughter Jenna (Chloe East), and his father, Sheriff Hadley (Robert Forster), won't step down even though his health is failing. When a tourist is found torn apart at the house she'd rented with her boyfriend (Jimmy Tatro), the case lands on John's desk.

The killings keep coming. The press starts talking about a wolf, the station fills up with calls from frightened locals and everyone in town starts eyeing their neighbours. Working alongside Officer Julia Robson (Riki Lindhome), John keeps telling himself there's no such thing as werewolves, but the longer the case drags on, the closer he gets to losing it.

It was the last film Robert Forster shot. The actor from 'Jackie Brown' and 'Breaking Bad' died in October 2019, on the very day 'El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie' came out with him back in his old role, and the film is dedicated to him. Cummings has said they expected a polite no, but Forster signed on because he saw it as a drama about a father and a son. Filming took place in March 2019 in Kamas, Samak and Coalville, three small towns in Summit County.

It premiered at Beyond Fest in Los Angeles, at a drive-in in the middle of the pandemic, and later closed Fantastic Fest in Austin. Orion Classics released it in the US on 9 October 2020, in a handful of cinemas and on demand at the same time. Reviews were mostly kind, though some critics felt the mix of scares and laughs didn't always hold together.

• Horror
• Thriller
• Mystery