Frank Grillo Bites Back in Werewolves

If you're ever taking on a merciless assailant, you want Frank Grillo by your side. He's faced down aliens, wolves, Purgers... OK, so he got his ass handed to him by Captain America, but no one's perfect.

But if he had the choice, which creatures would he rather face from his cinematic back catalogue: the brain-sucking Harvesters from the Skyline movies, or the lycanthropes from his latest action-horror, Werewolves? The hard-hitting character actor barely skips a beat. “I'd rather go against a werewolf,” he says. “They're humans first, so there's a humanity, there's that aspect to what a werewolf is. [The Harvester] is not that.”

He laughs heartily. “Maybe they could fight each other! Maybe that's Werewolves 2! We have to turn into wolves in order to fight the aliens!”

After all, his new film is Werewolves plural, not just Werewolf. Directed by Steven C. Miller and edited by Austin's own Greg MacLennan (“great editor,” Grillo grins), it will be released in theatres Dec. 6. In it, Grillo plays Wesley Marshall, a survivor of a supermoon event that turned every human touched by moonlight into a shapeshifting monster. A year later, there's another supermoon coming, and that means lots more werewolves on the prowl.

Werewolves being at least somewhat human means dealing with human foibles, and in Werewolves there are people who crave the blood lust liberty of shedding their skin for something furrier and more furious. “It's like vampire movies," Grillo said. "Some people want to be bitten, they want eternal life [and] it's the same thing here. People say, ‘Wait a minute. I can be bigger, stronger, I can live longer, I can be everything I'm not in my human life. I want that.’”

So Werewolves brings not just one lupine killer but a whole pack of them – all created with practical effects. Grillo makes it clear that he prefers acting against real costume characters than against as to-be-added-later CG opponent. “I've done lots of those movies where there's a ball on a stick or a piece of tape on a camera, and I've got to tell ya, even the best actors, it's difficult at times to dial it in.”

By contrast, the Werewolves set was “a treat. ... You've got these giant, 7-foot guys dressed in these amazing, Alec Gillis-created, wolf costumes. You're in Puerto Rico, it's 100 degrees, it's nighttime, there's a lot of noise and smoke, and you're in it. You're doing it.” There's that signature chuckle again. “I've got wolves drooling on me. It's kind of actor-proof.”

However, his kids turned out to be a much tougher audience. They were visiting him during filming, and he was thrilled to be able to take them on set to see the monsters in person. “There's these five wolves, and my son is eating a candy bar. I go, 'what do you think, buddy?' and he looks at them and goes, ‘I'm not scared.’” However, that was just on set. Grillo was eagerly looking forward to showing them the final film. “My kids are young, and they grew up with CGI, so a lot of the movies that they relate to are all CGI-laden. So they don't know what this movie looks like. They'll find out.”

Yet Grillo know he couldn't get too caught up in the moment. After all, he explains, “this isn't a big budget movie, so it's not like we've got four more [wolves] in storage. This was it, so we had to be careful that we didn't destroy anything because we would have been in trouble.”

And Grillo is the perfect opponent for all those shaggy slayers. After all, from the malevolent Hydra agent Rumlow in the Captain America films to Sergeant Leo Barnes in The Purge franchise to alien-hunting LAPD officer Mark Corley in Beyond Skyline, and the nameless anti-hero driver in heist flick Wheelman, no one does grizzled and beat-up like Frank Grillo. “That's my life,” he says. “Somebody you don't want invite to dinner but if there's a problem you want to call that guy.”

Grillo traces that perception of him back to his breakout role as MMA coach Frank Campana in 2011 fight drama Warrior. “I'm an old school guy – I'm old, and I went to school – and I kind of have settled into the idea that that's who I am. I'm not a criminal, I'm not a Navy SEAL, but I'm a fighter. I grew up in martial arts and boxing, I'm an athletic person and I'm a little bit of a hard ass, and somehow that's translated into movie characters that people like to relate to.”

Werewolves opens in theatres Dec. 6.