Cinequest Film Festival – Writer/director Danny Dunlop‘s feature Wolves opens with shots of snowy and desolate Canadian streets. The wind bellows against bare trees. This creates a frigid sense of isolation that permeates throughout the runtime. Inspired by true events, this thriller is oddly haunting in the way that it portrays both loneliness and obsession.

Mark Nocent stars as an unnamed recluse who spends his evenings looking at dating sites. In the day, he works for a moving company and steals jewelry that he tries to sell at local pawn shops. His apartment is hardly decorated and feels as empty as the occupant’s life.  The protagonist’s only roommate is a pet turtle named Petey, and the reptile may be his only friend in the world. After the recluse is fired from his job, due to his thievery, he becomes obsessed with local news reports about animal mutilations. Instead of finding another job, he investigates the series of cold cases, falling deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole.

Wolves is definitely a slow burn. Because it follows a young man who has little to no real relationships in his life, Nocent consumes much of the screen time. Fortunately, he handles the role well, including the gradual changes that befall his character the more consumed he becomes with the cold cases. At one point, the recluse talks to a local sociology professor, a true crime expert who’s recently written about the animal mutilations. The protagonist confesses that the killer could be him, or, well, someone like him, a young and friendless white male. This is one of the film’s most interesting aspects. The recluse generally fears, or at least wonders, if he has what it takes to kill someone. There’s also flashes of violence that he exhibits. In trying to discover the animal killer, he wants to better understand himself and what he may be capable of. Some brief flashbacks clue viewers into the hermit’s past, though the backstory feels too undercooked and a bit befuddling

This feature is certainly an interesting character study, though, at times, it plods along a little too slowly. It feels like it takes the recluse a long time to finally crack the case. The rest of the film features the protagonist sitting alone in his apartment, staring at his laptop, or driving around late at night, checking out one seedy back alley after another. There are times when these sequences grow a little tiresome. That said, overall, the feature toys with some interesting concepts and Dunlop really makes excellent use of setting to reinforce the sense of isolation. The apartment feels so sparse, while the chilly exterior shots reinforce the coldness that exists within the recluse’s life, underscoring his desperation for some type of connection, especially a girlfriend.

There are some interesting ideas at play in Wolves. It’s also a feature that really uses its atmosphere to create an affecting tone. While the feature sometimes feels a little too sedate, it’s still a fascinating character study, a unique tale of loneliness that also examines the capacity for violence that may exist in all of us. True crime fans should give this one a watch.

6.5 Out of 10