Rising Wolf: Silly Elevator Death-Trap Thriller (Yes, Really) Definitely Plummets Downward
By Thom Ernst
Rating: D
In director Antaine Furlong's Rising Wolf (formerly titled Ascendant), a young woman with the quixotic name of Aria Wolf (Charlotte Best) wakes to find herself imprisoned inside a high-tech elevator rigged as a death trap.
The how's and why's of her entrapment is a momentary mystery to be quickly resolved when Yaroslav, the evillest of Soviet master spies, appears on a wall-sized monitor goading and snarling at his hostage with overhyped theatrics of a silent movie villain.
Aria's beloved father, Richard Wolf (Jonny Pasvolsky), appears on-screen with Yaroslav, beaten and bound to a chair.
Yaroslav flings Aria Wolf from floor to ceiling in a series of abrupt rises and sudden weightless drops as a means of forcing Richard Wolf into revealing information about an unknown third party. In turn, Aria is forced to witness her father's relentless torture and subsequent stalwartly resistance.
Until now, Aria knew her father only as a loving parent and nothing of his alternate life as a political assassin. Now, Aria finds herself the unwilling pawn in a deadly game of tell-or-die confronted by family deceptions as well as hidden means and purpose.
But one cannot go through life with a name as mythically compelling as Aria Wolf and not expect to go unchallenged by a call to adventure. And so, like all heroes with uncompromising heroic names, Aria is tested with a choice between death or survival.
PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN
Flashback scenes reveal two young girls, presumably a young Aria and her sister, squeezed between moments of elevator horror and maudlin revelations of love and betrayal. These flashback scenes divulge a past that we hope will clarify something about the present. But even though there is little doubt that something radically important is going on between the girls, their indirect, emotionally relaxed interactions confound rather than enlighten the narrative.
Rising Wolf (although “Dropping Wolf” seems a more appropriate title) is the third— following Gaia Weiss’ Meander (2020) and Alexandre Aja's Oxygen (2021)—in an unofficial run of films featuring women mysteriously locked in booby-trapped chambers from which they must fight to escape. But if these films mark a rise in a new genre, Rising Wolf's elevator thriller defeats the effort.
Alex Menglet plays Yaroslav with an unconvincing menace that would embarrass Boris Badenov. Rising Wolf is Aria's story despite Menglet's efforts to steal the show. His performance might be amusing if everyone else—or even anyone else —approached their roles with a smidgen of Menglet's aptitude for hammy deliveries and growling intimidations.
The film is a confusing, rather than complex, series of threats and reveals and confessions that never successfully gel into a suitable resolve. By the end of it, we are left with a faint notion that there has been an attempt to tell a story of great emotional importance. But that importance, whatever it might be, fails to connect with the audience, and our hopes for a killer elevator thrill-ride plummets below sub-basement level.
Rising Wolf. Directed by Antaine Furlong. Starring Charlotte Best, Alex Menglet, and Jonny Pasvolsky. Available on VOD platforms beginning August 6.