Crew
Director/Screenplay/Producer – Wayne David, Producers – Linzy Attenborough, Dominic Davey & Wayne David, Photography – Ariel Artur, Additional Photography – Don Weerasirie, Music – Rupert Uzzell, Visual Effects Supervisor – Nicholas Hurst, Makeup Effects – David Foxley, Production Design – Ugne Rimaviciute. Production Company – Lightning Strike Pictures.
Cast
Wayne David (William), Sian Altman (Chantelle), Grant Masters (The Visitor)
Plot
William is in hiding in a cottage in the English countryside. Some of the time he is joined by his girlfriend Chantelle. He is afraid of the beast he keeps confined in the garden shed. At the same time, the police seem to be looking for William for the crimes he may have committed.
Wolf Garden was a directorial debut for British director-writer-producer Wayne David who also plays the lead role of the character William.
The title Wolf Garden leads you to expect a Werewolf Film before you start watching. On the other hand, I had to remind myself we have had assorted works such as Wolf Creek (2005) and sequel, The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and tv’s Wolf Hall (2015), which have all referenced wolves in their titles without actually delving into lycanthropy.
As it starts, it would appear that Wolf Garden is one of these latter films. There is nothing to do with any werewolves, or even wolves for that matter. What we have is Wayne David in hiding at a cottage in the placid English countryside (location shooting in the Hertfordshire region). Sometimes he is joined by his girlfriend Sian Altman. There is some beast he keeps confined in the garden shed, although we never get to see what this is. It appears as the film goes on that he might have done something terrible and possibly even that the police are searching for him, but we are not privy to what this might be.
This unfortunately is the whole of Wolf Garden. It is a film long on a good deal of mood but short of any clear explanations about what is going on. It is up to the audience to endure with the film in the hope that these might eventually transpire – where I have my doubts if many audiences would have the patience for doing so. I did my professional duty and to Wolf Garden’s credit, it does eventually pull together and comes down on the side of the fantastic in a reasonable surprise right at the ending.
You cannot help but feel that all of this might have made for an okay short film but tires the patience as a full-length film. Much of it hovers around a state of The Ambiguously Fantastic where we cannot be certain if everything, including the girlfriend, might not all be in Wayne David’s head. Or whether what he keeps locked in the garden shed and is seen feeding is an actual or merely an imaginary or an allegorical beast. Throughout all of this, Grant Masters fulfils a role, exactly like Griffin Dunne in An American Werewolf in London (1981), to pop up and give David warnings.
Trailer here