By Jacob Cameron

Coyotes is a film that aims to be a creature feature with a message. It has a surprisingly good cast and a good director to match. But sadly, this was a disappointing film.

Coyotes tells the story of a family trapped in their Hollywood home by a power outage. Father Scott, played by Justin Long, tries to protect his estranged wife and child from the power outages and dangerous terrain. But just when things can’t get worse, their home is invaded by a pack of wild coyotes who are out for blood. The pack attacks anyone and anything that moves.

This film was directed by Colin Minihan, who directed a severely underrated film called Grave Encounters. That film commented on the dubious nature of ghost hunting television shows in the 2000’s while also being genuinely unnerving. The unfortunate fact about Coyotes is that it barely comments on what it’s trying to say and is not really that scary. Again, it’s a shame considering the cast on hand.

Justin Long is generally good at his job; especially in horror films. His role as an overworked artist is not developed enough to be effective. There’s an attempt made to try and paint him as someone who’s never at home, which culminates in a fight between him and his wife. Additionally, there’s a subplot where his daughter just refers to her father by his first name. This falls flat and just feels contrived. 

There are neighbors who feel like caricatures of Hollywood residents. There’s a neighbor who uses drugs and has some strange hobbies. A woman who the neighbor pays for certain favors. And a couple, one of whom is a successful actor, who meets a grisly fate. None of these characters are given anything interesting to do, and it would’ve been more interesting if the focus was on the main family.

The actual coyotes looked weird. The CGI was not that impressive and definitely broke the uncanny valley. Doing anything with graphics is very hard, so there is a need to not be too harsh unnecessarily. There are a few scenes that look like actual blood was used. But those scenes were few and far between.

This movie feels like a lesser version of the 1990 film Arachnophobia. Where a town is invaded by lethal spiders and the town is unprepared to stop them. There’s even an exterminator in both movies who are less than stable mentally. With Coyotes, there was a lot that could’ve been said in terms of themes. Especially when there was an implication that the coyotes had moved closer to humans due to wildfires in a pretty relentless callback to recent events.

At the end of the day, this was a painfully mediocre film. There were many opportunities to make something out of this. Even something weirdly profound. But this was, unfortunately, a waste of a potentially interesting premise. 

1 1/2 stars