Crew
Director – Arnold Cassius [Doug Aarniokoski], Screenplay – Craig Spector, Based on the Novel Animals (1993) by Craig Spector & John Skipp, Producers – Bill Borden & Barry Rosenbush, Photography – Matthew Williams, Music – Alan Brewer, Visual Effects Supervisor – John Ross, Visual Effects – Gork Enterprises, Special Effects Supervisor – Ryan Roundy & Frank Toro, Makeup Effects Designer – Chis Richard Hansen, Production Design – Christopher DeMuri. Production Company – Emylia/American World Pictures/T&C Pictures/Anonymous Content/Borden & Rosenbush Entertainment.
Cast
Marc Blucas (Jarrett), Nicki Aycox (Nora), Naveen Andrews (Vic), Eva Amurri (Jane), Andy Comeau (Jules), Bart Johnson (Vaughn)
Plot
In the small nowhere town of Clayton, Jarrett is hanging out at his local bar when the sultry Nora comes in. She approaches him and the two spend the night together. Amid much in the way of heated sex, Nora moves in with Jarrett, even as he is laid off at work. However, Nora’s sire Vic has been searching for her and now comes, taking her away and making her a prisoner. When Jarrett tries to stand up for her, Vic reveals his true nature as an animal. Jarrett then finds that with Nora having bitten him, he now has some of the animal in him.
Doug Aarniokoski is a director who started out in the industry in the 1990s as an assistant director at Full Moon Productions. Aarniokoski then made his debut as director with Highlander: Endgame (2000), the fourth film in the franchise. Animals was his second film but appears to be such a negative experience that he substituted the pseudonym Arnold Cassius. Under his own name, Aarniokoski subsequently went on to the post-holocaust survival film The Day (2011) and the hilariously trashy horror film Nurse 3-D (2013). More recently, Aarniokoski appears to have abandoned making films and has worked as a tv director and as a producer on genre shows such as Sleepy Hollow (2013-7), Limitless (2015-6) and Star Trek: Picard (2020-23).
Animals (1993) was one of the novels of John Skipp and Craig Spector, the writing duo who were at the forefront of the 1980s Splatterpunk movement in horror. The two first appeared with the novelisation of Fright Night (1985) and then the classic Splatterpunk vampire novel The Light at the End (1986). This was followed by The Cleanup (1987), The Scream (1988), Dead Lines (1989), The Bridge (1991), as well as their working on the screenplay for A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child (1989). Animals would be their last collaboration together before both went separate ways. As a result, Spector on his own is credited for the screenplay for the film.
For some time, Animals gives you the impression it is trying to be a very different film. You are aware it is a horror film of some type and we see Naveen Andrews transforming in the prologue, but we have no clues what other than that. The film then switches point-of-view to Marc Blucas. Aarniokoski seems to be aiming for a snapshot of Middle America with Blucas as a standard working man – we visit him on his job site, go to his home, while quite a bit of the film takes place as his neighbourhood bar where he has been regarded as a local hero for travelling beyond the town.
Into the equation comes Nicki Aycox who exudes sultry seductiveness from every pore. It is when the two of them hook up that Animals switches over to being an erotic thriller. With scenes with Blucas and Aycox having sex on a kitchen table and on the hood of a car in the rain, Animals looks as though it is trying to tap something of an erotic film like 9½ Weeks (1986). There are times it manages to resemble a Zalman King film – think something like Two Moon Junction (1988) but with the addition of monsters. However, Aarniokoski’s erotic scenes are just as likely to slide off the page into absurdity as anything else – the sex in the rain scene ends with the ridiculous image of Nicki Aycox halfway up the wall of the alley with Blucas’s face buried between her legs.
Animals avoids telling us what type of monster movie it is. We get a series of rather absurd effects throughout where the eyes of the affected seem to glow with every colour. The actual transformation or the monster itself is never shown – just assorted snarlings and point-of-view shots. To no particular surprise, the eventual revelation is that Animals is no more than a regular Werewolf film – although the word werewolf is never actually used anywhere throughout.
The point where what is going on becomes evident is about the point that Animals becomes a far less interesting film than it has been hinting at. The actual revelation of the werewolves comes in the most ridiculous way possible – where Marc Blucas and Naveen Andrews are facing off at the climax and we see their inner wolves emerge, with their transformations represented by glowing CGI animated wolf spirits emerging and clashing.
Trailer here