Review: There’s a She-Wolf in the Closet
Jacqueline Castel’s ‘My Animal’ is a turbulent, embodied depiction of first love
The Yearning Rating: ✰✰✰
Romance: ✰✰✰
Sex: ✰✰✰✰✰
Storytelling: ✰✰
Performance: ✰✰✰1/2
Yearning: ✰✰✰✰✰
This review was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, films like this one would not be possible. The Yearning is grateful for the artists who do this work and we are not being paid to promote any content (lol).
Light spoilers ahead.
Written by Ali Romig
Even if you wouldn’t consider yourself a fan of the supernatural genre, chances are if you’re reading this newsletter, you’ve heard of the lesbian vampire. This alluring temptress is prolific in literature and media, from the underground to the mainstream. There’s Dracula’s Daughter, Carmilla, The Gilda Stories, The Hunger, and on and on all the way up to last year’s short-lived Netflix series First Kill. And if Stephanie Meyer is to be believed, where there’s a vampire, there’s a werewolf. So then why is it that the lesbian werewolf is largely unheard of?1
Enter Jacqueline Castel’s new 80s-set supernatural romance My Animal, a film that seeks to rectify this glaring oversight by introducing closeted, lesbian werewolf Heather to the canon. My Animal’s trailer may lead you to believe that it’s serving up much the same in terms of what this genre has to offer. With its heavy red saturation, silky bed sheets, and exposed jugulars, it all feels a bit familiar…did Castel simply swap fangs for muzzles and call it a day? For me, the answer is both yes and no. It’s clear that Castel is aware of the sharp-toothed foremothers from which her film was born—and she isn’t afraid to reference them—but by making My Animal a werewolf story, Castel is able to introduce a new take on sexuality and identity through a supernatural lens. One that feels, in many ways, much more human.
Over the course of its 100-minute runtime, My Animal shape shifts between genres. Part romance, part horror-fantasy, and part family drama, the film’s identity is as fluid as its protagonist’s. Heather (played with boundless appeal by Bobbi Salvör Menuez) is coming of age in a snowy, small Canadian town in the 1980s. In the film’s tense, dimly-lit first scene, we learn that at a young age she inherited her father’s werewolfism. But aside from these lunar antics, she is just your average lesbian dirtbag. An introverted hockey player who’s only friend appears to be the middle-aged owner of the ice rink, she spends most of her time either at her part-time job or masturbating to posters of female body-builders. While her family is aware of her lycanthropy and treats it as an inevitability, they are unaware of her burgeoning lesbian identity, which Heather purposefully hides from them.
This becomes harder once she meets effortlessly dazzling figure skater Jonny (an ethereal Amandla Stenberg). The two share an almost instant and incredibly organic connection (which may be aided by Bobbi and Amandla’s IRL-friendship). Despite having a douchebag boyfriend who she can’t quite shake, Jonny finds a type of safe harbor in Heather. And in Jonny, Heather finds someone with whom she can finally let her guard down. She may never explicitly reveal her secret-werewolf identity to Jonny, but a different animal instinct quickly emerges between the two.
What’s interesting about My Animal as a “monster” movie is that much of the film takes place during the weeks in between two full moons; this means that the tension in the story is less about Heather turning into a werewolf, and more about her turning into a fully-realized sexual being. The magnetism between the two leads is the film’s greatest strength and kept me fully invested from start to finish. As the stakes of their flirtation become increasingly tangible, we see Heather (who is giving butch Julianne Moore, am I wrong?) settle into a delicious masc swagger. This growing sense of confidence allows her to finally approach Jonny with an irresistible invitation to act on their mutual desire. One scene towards the film’s climax finds the two circling each other near a bar’s jukebox, literally dancing around the now-sweltering heat between them. Let’s just say…I was flustered!2
Alas, stellar performances alone can’t save this film from its pitfalls. The plot of My Animal is meandering, and the script a bit circuitous and heavy-handed. There were also questions that were left frustratingly unexamined. I would’ve loved a bit more interiority from Jonny, who’s only ever perceived from Heather’s perspective. Jonny is a transplant from the Bronx, now living in a nearly all-white town with her white, possibly closeted father (who is also her figure skating partner…3). Her home life, as well as her complex sexuality, should have been given more space in the film—its omission is odd at best.
In terms of the horror present, I don’t think any die-hard fans of the genre will find what they’re looking for here. Despite an opening scene that calls back to classics like Poltergeist and The Ring, My Animal seems much more interested in the aesthetics of horror than in delivering actual scares. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. The film’s heavy stylization is pleasingly Lynchian, presenting a Twin Peaks-esque version of a small town—all neon lights and synth-forward score. Moments of respite between Heather and Jonny take on an otherworldly, dreamlike feel. The isolated, color-saturated shots are a visual representation of the escape they find in each other’s bodies. And while Castel never shies away from the film’s supernatural themes, she’s also careful to remain tasteful in her depictions of them. We don't actually see Heather as a werewolf until the final act, which helps keep the viewer firmly grounded in the reality of Heather and Jonny’s romance.
All of this leads me back to my original question: My Animal charts the same well-trodden path as many queer vampire romances—forbidden love, sexual awakening, danger—so what exactly is gained in making Heather a werewolf instead, and are the gains rich enough to matter? My short answer is yes. In a Them piece about the enduring potency of the lesbian vampire, they describe this character as “alluring, thrilling, and feminine.” Indeed, most depictions of the lesbian vampire are almost hyper-feminine. The indestructibly cool seductress, always in control. Her power comes from her ability to attract, rather than from any kind of outward-facing monstrousness. A vampire is a vessel—a dead, cold thing dressed up as a lover. The werewolf is something far messier, harder to hide. Wholly embodied and feral.
Throughout the film, the camera often lingers on Heather’s bloody noses, bruises, cuts, drool, all the unattractive realities of being human (and yes, also the results of her violent transformations). The repeated imagery of buff female bodybuilders further drives home this point: no part of this werewolf narrative represents classically “idealized” femininity. Instead, it spotlights a subversive kind of masculinity. Which makes My Animal about more than just sexuality and repression, but about identity and gender nonconformity—how we exist in our bodies, how we experience them, and how we strive to make them work for us. When you’re a literal shape shifter, then what makes you, you? With two non-binary leads (both seemingly playing cis-women) it’s a question I actually would have loved to see the film lean harder into; nevertheless, its inclusion makes me hopeful for the future of this potential new subgenre in queer cinema.
As the film moves frantically towards its end, we see Heather start to regard her animal “affliction” as a potential escape route, mirroring the way many young queer people eventually come to understand that the thing they’ve been taught to resist might actually open the door to a better life. Still, by the time the credits began to roll, I felt left in the lurch. So many of the characters end up stuck in a kind of purgatory—Jonny especially. But maybe that speaks to the ways in which Menuez and Stenberg made me care for their characters and root for their continued connection. Watch My Animal for its leads’ sizzling chemistry, and let’s hope there are more queer werewolves to come.
My Animal is now playing in select theaters, and will be available for rent or purchase on September 15th.
These are the films that made your gaunts and guncles gay panic in their wicker-adorned bedrooms…for our next From the Archives, we’re taking it back to the 80s, ladies.
Next week on The Yearning, Meg gets into the ring with a review of Roger Ross Williams’ Cassandro.
There’s the early-aughts film Ginger Snaps, but the queerness there is all subtext. If I am forgetting any major lesbian werewolves, let me know in the comments!
I think it’s obvious by now that I have a thing for redheads.
The stunt doubles used during these scenes were comically obvious.