A common red flag for movie quality occurs when a movie is based on a video game.  There are exceptions, of course, and this may be one of them.  Happily, the film doesn’t play like a game — at least I didn’t think so — although it has a few too many dramatic turns to be fully satisfying.  It plays like Knives Out meets Clue in the wintry wilderness of Beaverfield, Vermont.  If Agatha Christie dealt with werewolves, this might have been the result.

Josh Ruben’s film introduces Finn Wheeler (Sam Richardson) as Beaverfield’s new forest ranger.  He meets about a dozen kooky locals just before a big storm hits and closes the road into town; meanwhile, a killer begins eliminating the townsfolk one by one.  Evidence points to a werewolf, which, of course, no one wants to believe, and everyone is indicated to be the killer at one point or another.  Who could it be?  Is there a real werewolf?  Who will survive?

If those questions interest you, this film is right up your alley.  It’s sassy and snarky, glib and brutal, sharp and scary.  It almost overcomes its artificial premise, cast of perhaps too-quirky characters and multiple red herrings to deliver a worthy mystery.  I was into it most of the way, partly because it is amusing and irreverent, partly because I really like Milana Vayntrub (better known as Lily, the AT&T spokeslady) as Cecily the mail lady, partly because of the thematic back-and-forth involving an incipient gas pipeline planned for the area and partly because of the beautiful, secluded setting.  But a misstep involving everyone’s firearms just doesn’t make any sense, and it is never rectified correctly.  This is also one of those stories with too many climaxes, intent on being so clever that you aren’t supposed to figure out the mystery until it is fully, finally revealed.

Game based or not, this is a fun movie for fans of murder mysteries with twists or werewolf movies with comic elements.  The cast is appealing, the direction mostly sound, and the setting a beaut.  Like science fictions films set in the barren desert, there is now a subgenre of horror films which occur in wintry locales, usually mountainous and heavily forested, where danger may lurk behind every tree.  Such rural settings are picturesque, made threatening by wicked weather, isolation from other towns and the evil that prowls at night.  They imitate to some degree film noir classics, but with a deadlier and often supernatural edge.  This one is pretty decent.  ☆ ☆ 1/2.  4 February 2022.