Horror, it is said, is a metaphorical genre. That’s how Interview With a Vampire mainstreamed the idea of the monster as a proxy for queer liberation. It’s how Ginger Snaps and The Company of Wolves perpetually connected lycanthropes with adolescent female sexuality. But the underlying myths are difficult to kill: In the case of the cinematic werewolf, it all goes back to the curse of Larry Talbot in the original The Wolf Man, and the idea that there’s no joy in losing your humanity to become a savage beast.
Talbot’s sharp-eared shadow hangs long over Jacqueline Castel’s dark and tragic My Animal, and most especially over Heather (Menuez). It flows around her like her long ginger tresses, a blazing fire that shows her close relationship with her twin younger brothers (the Halpennys), and her father (the inimitably, charmingly grizzled McHattie), and marks a division with her mother (von Palleske). The irony there is that the red hair comes from her mother’s side of the family: It’s being a werewolf that comes from her dear old dad. Those bonds of blood are more alluded to more than outright stated, but in the way that any family doesn’t explicitly refer to their kitchen table or their trash can. It’s just a reality with which they live, and a reality that threatens to explode when Heather starts hanging out with local ice-skating star Jonny (Stenberg).
Where so many queer creature features attempt to refract and reframe fairy tale tropes, Jae Matthews’ script for My Animal is intriguing because there’s always the threat of the real world at the edges. Heather’s struggle for acceptance in the hockey rink becomes a symbol for her perpetual outsider status, and that Jonny even looks at her – never mind in the longing way that she so desires – is as powerful an influence as the waxing and waning moon. Castel and cinematographer Bryn McCashin drag wallflower Heather out of her mud and beige home life into the saturated neons that fizz around Jonny and her questionable small-town rebel friends, and then into captivatingly composed crimson tableaus. It’s red as passion, red as lust, red as warning, red as blood, red as violence.
Breathtaking as those hyper-stylized moments are, it’s in a handful of short, moving scenes with McHattie that My Animal finds its real kinship with those Universal werewolf flicks: poignancy. Those moments of father-daughter intimacy, in which they bond over their shared curse and he passes on whatever shreds of wisdom he has acquired, are truly touching. It’s moments like this in which My Animal connects with the werewolf coming-of-age movies, as Heather’s inevitable embracing of her inner monster becomes less about liberation and more about acceptance. In an understated performance, Menuez reminds the audience that it’s not always cool and easy to be the outsider.
This article appears in The 33rd Annual Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival.