Ivan Martin plays the character known only as the “Woodsman” in writer/director Kelsey Taylor’s adaptation of a familiar fairy tale. (Photos courtesy of To Kill a Wolf)
By Richard Ades
Most of us are familiar with Little Red Riding Hood, the story of a girl who ventures into the woods and has a disastrous encounter with a hungry wolf. The fairy tale is generally considered a symbolic warning to girls about the dangers they face from human “wolves” (i.e., lechers) as they approach womanhood.
With To Kill a Wolf, writer/director Kelsey Taylor takes the tale’s basic characters and injects them into a modern yarn with an entirely different message. While the original story cautions listeners to avoid danger, Taylor’s adaptation is about dealing with danger’s aftermath: the guilt, shame and other reactions that remain after a catastrophe that was at least partly one’s own fault.
Switching the order of the original tale, Taylor starts out by introducing us to the “Woodsman” (Ivan Martin), a grizzled middle-aged man who lives on his own in a remote, wooded area of Oregon. We first meet the hermit when he’s prowling among the trees with a metal detector searching for—what?
The answer comes when the detector alerts him to an object buried under leaves on the forest floor. It’s an animal trap, the kind that’s designed to clamp onto its unsuspecting prey’s leg and hold it until the creature either starves to death or is dispatched by the trap’s owner.
The man sets off the trap, rendering it harmless, and moves on.
It’s in the midst of such a search that the Woodsman discovers a teenage girl lying on the snowy ground, unconscious and near death. After taking her home and nursing her back to health, he asks how she ended up in that situation, to which he receives the evasive reply, “I don’t know.”
Dani (Maddison Brown) refuses to explain how she ended up alone in the woods.
We later learn that this Red Riding Hood stand-in is a 17-year-old runaway named Dani (Maddison Brown), but the girl stubbornly refuses to answer the Woodsman’s questions about her past. She’s obviously been through some kind of trauma, and whatever it was seems to have rendered her incapable of trusting another human being.
Almost as obvious is the fact that the Woodsman has been through a trauma of his own, as evidenced not only by his lonely lifestyle but by the artificial limb that’s hidden under his pants leg.
The two traumas, the girl’s and the man’s, form a mystery that’s only gradually explained with the help of an extended flashback and other devices. Keeping us invested along the way are two intriguing performances: Martin’s as the gruff but well-meaning Woodsman and Brown’s as the girl who keeps her emotions inside until it’s no longer possible.
Ably filling out the main cast are David Knell as a local rancher, and Kaitlin Doubleday and Michael Esper as Dani’s estranged aunt and uncle. Behind the scenes, the film benefits from the artistry of cinematographer Adam Lee and composers Sara Barone and Forest Christenson.
Directing her first feature-length film, Taylor has created a layered gem that’s at once a mystery, a character study and a meditation on the difficulty of healing from one’s own past. It’s an impressive debut, to say the least.
Rating: 4½ stars (out of 5)
To Kill a Wolf is available through VOD outlets beginning Sept. 23 and will screen virtually Sept. 25-30 through the Popcorn List’s Pop-up Series.
Reel Time With Richard Ades 