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Wolfwalkers Movie Review

Wolfwalkers is a 2020 Irish animated fantasy film directed by Tomm Moore. It’s his weakest effort so far, though it’s still quite good.

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“When I return, I want all the wolves gone from this forest“

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In 1650 Ireland, when wolves are seen as demonic and nature an evil to be tamed, a young apprentice hunter, Robyn, comes to Ireland with her father to wipe out the last pack. But when Robyn saves a wild native girl, Mebh, their friendship leads her to discover the world of the wolfwalkers. The problem with this plot is that it’s all too familiar. The first ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ movie and ‘Brave’ instantly come to mind when watching this film.

The former for the father-daughter relationship and the latter for all the turning of human into animal throughout the storyline. That is my biggest issue with Wolfwalkers – its unoriginality. I hold it to even more scrutiny having in mind that Tomm Moore had previously directed two wildly original movies and both are ultimately better than this one.

Still, I liked this film quite a bit despite its familiarity. That’s because the execution is reliably terrific in all areas, particularly in its strong emotional investment as it’s quite moving in the final scenes. The Robyn-Mebh relationship is undeniably the highlight of the entire picture. One girl is a “townie”, the other lives in the forest with wolves and is the titular wolfwalker. Their dynamic is so much fun and very sweet as they developed a genuine, lovely friendship.

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Easily the best and most endearing scenes are with the two girls while the father-daughter parts were very typical and repetitive. Again, I have seen it so many times before. I liked the villain. He was very cool and menacing, but ultimately too one-note and the entire colonization of Ireland theme was very undercooked and that was a shame as it had a lot of potential.

The other theme of man versus nature was much better realized, though again it’s been there, done that. The movie lacks the sophistication of the previous Moore efforts, but it is undeniably great for the little ones. The direction is good and the pacing is also fine while the voice acting is fantastic and full of forceful emotion.

Where Wolfwalkers excels is in the animation. While ‘The Secret of Kells’ and ‘Song of the Sea’ were both already incredibly artistic and gorgeous, this one is even better. Clearly Moore’s films continue to evolve technically and artistically and I can’t wait to see what he does next.

This time around he included the woodblock aesthetic, which is something that is new and fresh for this studio. The time period instantly became more evocative due to the film’s very old-fashioned, vintage look. There are some highlights to pinpoint here. One is the look of the wolves and the overall forest. There were some moments in the movie where the action paused for a bit and what was presented to audiences was a truly stunning painting.

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Yes, the film is a walking work of art. It was absolutely incredible to behold. The other highlight was on the opposite end of the spectrum in those action scenes that were suddenly more fluid and fueled by immense danger. That was realized with very stark colors and the effect that the colors were attacking the characters themselves was just very inspired and authentic.