Cast: Ethan Embry, Li Jun Li, Jeremy Harris

Written By: Abby Miller

Directed By: Michael Patrick Jann

Release Year: 2025

Audio Description produced By:

Written By:

Directed By:

What Is it?: A somewhat functional cop (Embry) has a run in with Alma (Li), who mentions that they attacked her dog, and is covered in blood. He begins to investigate this reported wolf attack, only for things to get stranger, and his son goes missing.

What Works: Not much. Ethan Ebry was an actor I grew up with, and really wanted Hollywood to do more with. Somehow, for some reason, Embry just slowly faded away. he still works consistently, but not at the same level as he once did. So, I was excited to see that this random horror film had an actor in it I actually am rooting for. Embry has been on screen for decades, and has worked with some people who are still at the top of the Hollywood ladder, like Reese Witherspoon, but also the wide array of actors in can’t Hardly Wait. I enjoyed his short-lived FOX series Freakylinks, because he had this ability to give this wide eyed expression, and a goofy nerdy charm. He seemed easy to get along with, and it was his accessibility I always thought would continue to push his career.

Now he’s in this.

What Doesn’t Work: I’m not sure what the aim of the project was. Admittedly, i watched because it had audio description, but this feels like some of those straight-to-video compilations like mob Cops and Gunslingers from earlier this year. Films that have some fake sheen of a Hollywood film, but also end up like a film school project. Alma and the Wolf is not really scary, because it seems to want to be a horror comedy, but it isn’t really committed to that, or it isn’t pulling it off. it isn’t a film just for fans of needless gore, though it has a dash of gruesomeness inside. It isn’t really a werewolf movie, because it seems to also want to be a possession film. Or maybe… he’s just losing his mind. I’m not sure what Alma and the Wolf wanted to be, but I’m certain it missed the mark. It’s like with fusion restaurants. You can sometimes put things together that seem like they wouldn’t work, like Italian-Korean, but you most definitely can’t launch an Italian-Korean-Brazilian-TexMex-Vegan-All You Can eat Fine Dining Buffet that is also a Dinner theatre, but the shows aren’t traditional, they’re shadow puppets. At some point, you’re just trying to do everything, so nothing works. When there’s no cohesion, the movie never sticks.

it also has several horror tropes of people doing things no actual person would do. That can be charming, in an appropriate horror comedy, but in this hodgepodge, it just comes across as inept.

Just as an added note, I love watching or reading reactions to this. One person described the first half of the film as wholesome. How? Because sports? Does the inclusion of someone playing a sport make a film wholesome? What a weird choice. I’m also pretty sure any film trying to be a horror film isn’t striving to be wholesome.

The Audio Description: It’s fine. I’m pretty sure this film looks cheap, and the visual effects aren’t plentiful, so mostly it is a low budget horror with a guy investigating something that dosn’t make sense. And there are wolves (or werewolves?) involved. Some violence, a few tricks up the sleeve, but this track both felt like it was used to teach someone how to do audio description, and also… it didn’t take away from it either.

Why You Might Like it: You like horror movies, but not scary ones. Or overly gory ones. Or good ones. Some people do actually like bad horror movies, that is a thing.

You Might Not Like it If: You prefer good movies, or A24 vibes, or for the movie you’re watching to feel like it wasn’t made for less than the price of a new car.

Final Thoughts: It has audio description. And, as such, I’ll basically give any film a chance that bothered to pay for accessibility. Who knows? it might actually be good. But this, sadly, couldn’t have been saved by the best AD team. Alma And The Wolf feels like a film that entered production without much guidance, and was released to audiences as a sacrificial lamb. Still, this year has been driven by drivel like War of The Worlds and Madea’s Destination Wedding, so while Alma and the Wolf isn’t good, it also doesn’t feel like a sin simply through existence.

Rotten: 3.0/10