Colin Minihan returned to Austin this year with his first feature since 2018’s excellent “What Keeps You Alive,” which launched at the other beloved film event in the city, SXSW. Starring real-life couple Justin Long and Kate Bosworth, this thriller with an inspired concept was one of the most buzzed of Fantastic Fest before it kicked off, joining an unusual trend in the genre this year of stories of man vs. nature. There’s the killer chimp in “Primate,” a massive Great White in “Beast of War,” and this movie that hinges on a true danger in Los Angeles in which wildfires are pushing coyotes into populated areas more often than in the past. Take an ordinary family in the Hollywood Hills and throw both a wildfire and a menacing pack of killing machines at them and you have “Coyotes,” a movie that frustrates more than it thrills, never quite finding the right tone for the most harrowing night in the lives of its characters.
It starts with rats. Scott (Long) has hired an exterminator (Keir O’Donnell) to eliminate the rodent problem in their home, setting a tone of dark comedy with his loner extremist behavior. Actually, that’s a tone that’s probably set with the California girl whose tiny dog gets murdered by coyotes in the opening scene before she follows suit. From the beginning, writers Ted Daggerhart and Nick Simon struggle with tone, doing things like putting character names up on the screen like they’re in a comic book for no real reason other than to look a little edgy. “Coyotes” too often feels like it’s trying to be funny instead of just being naturally funny, such as with O’Donnell’s eccentric rodent killer. It’s as if there’s a much broader, parody-level version of this script about Hollywood eccentrics that’s been grafted onto a survival thriller, and the two films never quite see eye to eye.
Take Scott’s neighbor Trip (Norbert Leo Butz) and his hired “lady of the night” Julie (Brittany Allen). Allen does a reasonable job to ground her character, but Trip is a caricature, someone who exists in the world of the film just to be eaten by coyotes. His character doesn’t vibe with Scott, his wife Liv (Kate Bosworth), and their daughter Chloe (Mila Harris), who drive the survival narrative. Like all families in movies like this, they’ve seen better days, but Scott is forced to be heroic in ways he didn’t know he had in him when his wife and daughter are threatened by flames and fangs. Long is better in his other Fantastic Fest premiere (“Night Patrol”), but he’s effective here, and the film’s greatest asset may be how easy it is to buy him and Bosworth as a married couple. Real-life chemistry really helps a film like this one.
Now we need to talk about the coyotes. Perhaps all the tonal incongruity wouldn’t be as noticeable if the characters in “Coyotes” weren’t fleeing wild animals that simply never once look like they’re actual living creatures. They look not only like CGI characters but possibly the creation of an AI program given how inconsistently they perform. In fact, a lot of the buzz about “Coyotes” after the trailer dropped was about how the film might have used an AI program to create its title characters. The producers haven’t addressed the suspicion, but the fact that it seems possible is indicative of how poorly the creatures have been designed and executed. They don’t move in a normal, threatening way, never really looking like they’re sharing the same space with the characters.
If you’re willing to overlook the “fake-otes” and the occasionally lame stabs at humor, there are some memorable deaths in “Coyotes,” and likable enough performances from most of the ensemble. It’s a film that feels like a missed opportunity more than a disaster, a survival thriller that never quite finds its pulse.
This review was filed from the world premiere at Fantastic Fest. It opens on October 3.
