Fantastic Fest 2025- Coyotes is everything that the title implies, nothing more and nothing less. Yes, it’s a creature feature about snarling coyotes with a taste for blood. They attack a family hauled up in their Hollywood home after wildfires push the animals into neighborhoods. The movie is all kinds of silly and oddly endearing.
Directed by Colin Minihan, the film stars genre journeyman Justin Long as Scott, a father whose time is mostly consumed as a graphic novel writer and illustrator. Before we meet Scott and his family, however, Minihan sets the movie’s tone immediately when a pack of coyotes mauls and murders an LA-based influencer just minutes into the runtime. From that point, we know exactly the type of movie this will be, and it’s a heck of a ride.
During the rest of the movie, Scott and his family, including his wife Liv (Kate Bosworth) and their daughter Chloe (Mila Harris), fend off the vicious animals. For as absurd as the premise is, everyone here gives a good performance. Long is typically great in whatever he’s in, and it’s clear he had a heck of a lot of fun in this role. There’s even a scene where he stabs a coyote over and over and over again, until he’s splattered in its blood. Though, I can assure viewers, no animals were harmed during filming. Harris and Bosworth are good counterparts to Long’s performance, and the trio makes the film a little more believable.
Amid the coyote mayhem, the film anchors itself to family drama and tension. Scott isn’t very present, to the point he didn’t even know that the coyotes drew close to the home because Chloe kept feeding them and felt bad for the animals pushed out of their natural habitat. At one point, Liv tells Scott that he’s never really present. He’s always focused on his work. There’s some real human emotion at the heart of this creature feature, which somewhat elevates it and gives it a story beyond humans versus a pack of wild animals.
Meanwhile, the cast is rounded out by three eccentric characters, including an exterminator named Devon (Keir O’Donnell), who’s absolutely obsessed with killing rats. There’s also the messy playboy neighbor Trip (Norbert Leo Butz), and Julie (Brittany Allen), a sex worker who helps save the family more than once. These oddball characters add to the film’s outlandishness. Again, this is a film that never quite takes itself seriously and strikes the right tone as a horror-comedy more than anything else. I’ll also note that the film introduces each character like a comic book/graphic novel panel, which is a nice touch and unique design choice.
Overall, Coyotes is a ridiculously entertaining feature about, well, a pack of coyotes that stalk and kill. Yet, no matter how cartoonish the movie, there’s still human emotion and an interesting family dynamic at play. It’s also a heck of a lot of fun to watch Justin Long and Kate Bosworth take up arms against a pack of feral animals with help from some neighbors. Coyotes has bite and heart.
