The highest-rated video game movie on Rotten Tomatoes is a horror comedy gem

The genre of social deduction may be familiar to you if you have ever attended a board game night or amateur acting class. You and your friends are placed in a light role-playing scenario in a variety of genres, where super detectives and saboteurs work against each other while concealing their identities. This game has taken many forms. Many may recognize the video game Among us as a prime example, but the most famous is mafiabetter known as werewolf. The players are secretly divided into at least two factions: villagers and werewolves. At night, the werewolves choose a visitor to devour, and when day breaks, the whole group comes together to make accusations, discuss suspects, and vote on who they think the werewolves are. This game has been printed many times, with popular titles such as One Night Ultimate Werewolf And Werewolves of Miller's Hollow, which was adapted to the “Jumanji”-Style Family package. This also includes the VR game Werewolves inside its 2021 film adaptation, which is currently the highest-rated video game adaptation on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Werewolves inside Movie was written by Mishna Wolff and directed by the internet comedian and aspiring horror genius Josh Ruben. Anyone who knows the director’s previous film Scare me It will come as no surprise that this is another shocking and hilarious horror comedy with a small but colorful cast that includes Sam Richardson from Veep And Harvey Guillén from What we do in the shadows. The film is about Finn (Richardson), the likeable new park ranger of Beaverfield, who finds himself in the middle of a strange power outage and a brutal murder. Caught up in the various conflicts and scandals of the small, snowbound town, including a controversial pipeline project, the people are at war with themselves. This conflict is exacerbated when they learn that one of them might be a werewolf. Our hero, with the level-headed postal worker Cecily (Malina Vayntrub) at his side, he must calm the villagers while he wipes out the bloodthirsty lycanthrope. But werewolves aren't the only ones with a killer instinct.

Werewolves inside

Release date

25 June 2021

director

Josh Ruben

Duration

97

Authors

Mishna Wolff

slogan

A crime thriller with bite.

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This social deduction game is the perfect crime thriller

One problem people run into when adapting a game, whether it's for board games, cards, or consoles, is compensating for the lack of interactivity. How do you get people to enjoy a game with no gameplay? In the modern renaissance of video game adaptations, this problem is generally avoided by choosing appropriate themes. You could adapt an already very strong story like The last of usor delve into a game with enough background knowledge to make a story out of it, like Arcane or Stand outThere is not much to Werewolves inside as a game. There are no named characters, iconic scenes, or little things in the canon that fans would notice and criticize for. All Wolff and Ruben had was the vague idea of ​​a small medieval village and the simple game mechanics of arguing among friends.

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“Your parents are upper middle class.”

They dropped the former, opting instead for a modern city in the middle of nowhere. They also dropped the day-night cycle that the game revolves around, as well as the voting at the end of each round. While this may seem like an unfaithful adaptation, keeping these elements would result in a viewing experience that is far too repetitive. What they've kept are the really fun parts of the game: the tension when things get dark and you don't know who's going to end up on the chopping block next, the passionate arguments that erupt when tension and suspicion boil over, and the idea that the werewolf isn't the only killer. In short, they have retained the best elements of a classic crime thriller. Several suspects are trapped in a room with ulterior motives, desperately trying not only to survive but also to hide their true intentions. In the middle of it all is an investigator trying to find out the truth and the murderer who was one of them all along. That's the reason why Notice also works as an adaptation of the game, but Werewolves inside is even more effective than this classic comedy.

The optional roles added to the game are not carried over one-to-one; there are no real witches or oracles, but the idea of ​​them remains. There is a player whose job it is to mediate the situation and make the final decisions, a role that Finn is thrust into. There is a player with an incredibly useful ability who immediately becomes a target, such as an environmental scientist (Rebecca Henderson) with the tools to solve the case. There are even gameplay elements tied to the bloody murders as the city descends into chaos, including lovers dying in quick succession and one person being killed and taking another person with them.

“Werewolves Within” has a great twist

If you haven't seen the movie yet and want to see it without spoilers, I recommend you stop reading here, watch it, and then continue reading. The fusion of story and gameplay is best exemplified by the character Cecily Moore and the performance of Vayntrub. She is introduced to us as the playful, confident and charismatic new mail carrier in town. She is seemingly the only other sane person in Beaverfield who immediately welcomes Finn and fills him in on all the local drama, which creates romantic tension. As it turns out, Cecily is the werewolf and has successfully managed to take advantage of the town's selfish and petty nature to get dinner and a show. This is an incredibly effective twist that works even better if you've played werewolf enough times.

Milana Vayntrub plays Cecily as the master of the game, a werewolf who, despite being in the minority, successfully eliminates the entire village. She knows how to establish herself in the group, how to be likeable without making a big scene, how to ingratiate herself with the people who are most likely to have reasons or opportunities to get rid of her and, of course, how to stay in the background when the accusations arise. The best Werewolf players are never the loudest in the room. All Cecily had to do was sow the smallest seeds of distrust and let the people around her do the rest of the work by fighting and killing each other – and that's exactly what the people of Beaverfield do.

The strengths of “Werewolves Within” lie in its humor

The cast and crew of Werewolves inside has done what many video game movies can never quite capture: capture the feeling of playing. The comedic element of this horror comedy is the main reason for that. This movie is fun, and playing the game with friends is too. A small town is a scenario where everyone knows each other at least somewhat and has their interpersonal dramas, much like the guests at a board game night. I can't tell you how many games descended into a cacophony of voices yelling “That's what a werewolf would say!” while everyone got hungry for blood and accidentally threw themselves to their own doom. The silliness was criticized a bit, but that's exactly why the adaptation elements work. B-horror movies, deduction games, and whodunnit crime novels all have one thing in common: they're best when made with a sense of humor.

Werewolves inside is available to stream on Shudder

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