MY ANIMAL - Sundance

Written by Jae Matthews and directed, co-edited, and executive produced by Jacqueline Castel, My Animal is a unique coming-of-age story that ventures into the supernatural and has LGBTQ themes. My Animal has both the most romantic scene as well as some of the saddest scenes out of the features I watched during the Sundance Film Festival 2023. A teen-wolf horror set in a relentlessly snowy small town, My Animal gave me the chills for more reasons than one.

Heather (Bobbi Salvor Menuez) is a high schooler who lives with her parents and 2 twin brothers. Though they are involved in local hockey they harbor a secret — Heather and her father Henry (Stephen McHattie) are werewolves. Heather keeps to herself, but can’t help but notice Jonny (Amandla Stenberg), an alluring ice skater with relationship problems. Heather and Jonny become close, bonding over their plights and fun times, but after they become too close for comfort, Jonny pushes Heather away, an act that unleashes Heather’s inner beast.

My Animal shows how love has the capacity to both heal and hurt. The love story in My Animal is young but mature, and the chemistry between Bobbi Salvor Menuez and Amandla Stenberg is raw and palpable through the screen. Through the disturbing and supernatural elements, time was taken to display one of the most romantically shot love-making scenes I’ve had the pleasure to experience. I enjoyed the story of the film, I felt it was unique as instead of grounding the supernatural in lore, the character’s wolf-ness seemed to stem from or represent the character’s otherness.

But once the wolf finally manifested towards the end, it turned out to be quite a well-orchestrated climax to the suspense that had begun to build at the start of the final act. The music is too cool for high school in this film, alternating between rock songs and a musical score reminiscent of one found in a John Carpenter film with uncomfortably pounding beats and ominous melodies from musical score artist, Augustus Muller. My Animal also made use of the color red a lot in the film, signaling yet more ominous events to come. Like the red lighting used to color the snowy environment of the film, the story, too, was colored red with the spilling of blood in the film’s climax.

My Animal is about transformations and love — these two aspects intersect beautifully in the beginning, but by the end of My Animal they are violently separated. Both the pacing, cinematography, and even the ending of My Animal reminded me of Let The Right One In, and I believe My Animal would be enjoyed by fans of that film.