My Animal: Small-Town Teen Infatuation and a Coming-Of-Age Under the Full Moon
By Chris Knight
Rating: B-minus
Coming of age isn’t easy. Neither is being gay. And then there’s the dilemma of being a werewolf.
Not trying to be glib, but all three problems beset young Heather (Bobbi Salvör Menuez) in My Animal, a moody first feature from director Jacqueline Castel.
The film was shot in Timmins, Ont., in the dead of winter by the look of it, leaving plenty of hours for moonlit, werewolf-summoning darkness. It’s also set a few decades ago judging by the cars and TV screens, although neither time nor place is given much notice. This is about emotional truth, not chronological exactitude.
Amandla Stenberg and Bobbi Salvor Menuez in My Animal
All Heather wants is to be a goalie on the hockey team, a dream backed by her kindly dad (Stephen McHattie) but not, alas, by the local coach, who tells her girls don’t do such things.
And then one day she runs into Jonny (Amandla Stenberg), who’s practicing to be a figure skater under the less supportive tutelage of her own father (Kids In The Hall’s Scott Thompson, wasted in a throwaway part).
The two girls get along well, sharing stories of troublesome parents - Heather’s mom is an alcoholic - but it quickly becomes clear that Heather is falling harder and deeper than her straight friend.
The young men of Northern Ontario don’t come off looking good in this story. Jonny’s boyfriend Rick (Cory Lipman) is a jerk who puts more energy into having a good time with his lowlife buddies than being a romantic partner. Jonny’s disenchantment with him only serves to feed Heather with false hope, some of which plays out in gauzily shot erotic dreams.
Don’t go into My Animal looking for a full-on story of Sapphic lycanthropy, however. Whether due to budget constraints or (more likely) artistic choices, we see little in the way of Heather’s transformation, which is mostly teased through shots of howling wolves and blood-red moons.
Oh, and while we’re on the subject of lunar cycles, let me give My Animal points for not making every night a full moon. And let me take them away again for keeping Earth’s satellite in almost every night shot, when science tells us it’s up just as frequently during the day.
But I digress. Ultimately, what keeps this film from becoming great in either the werewolf or romance department is the way it fails to fully commit to either strain, or to meld them into something new and unique. The ending might even be said to suffer from a case of lupus ex machina.
On the plus side, the acting is supurb. I would watch the septuagenarian Nova Scotian McHattie in anything. And both female leads are believable and work well on the screen together, despite Stenberg being far and away the bigger name.
The recent Blood in the Snow horror film festival in Toronto had a different take, awarding My Animal best director, screenwriter (Jae Matthews) and cinematography (Bryn McCashin) while passing it over for acting prizes.
Meanwhile, the small-town atmosphere is perfectly captured by Castel. I’ve never been to Timmins, and now I don’t want to, at least in the winter. The chamber of commerce may not be happy with that sentiment, but I consider it a success for the film.
My Animal. Directed by Jacqueline Castel. Starring Bobbi Salvor Menuez, Amandla Stenberg, and Stephen McHattie. Opens in theatres Friday, Dec. 1.