Take a moment and revel in a few of your favorite werewolf films. A few films might have popped in your head like An American Werewolf in London, The Howling, Ginger Snaps, The Wolf Man, and perhaps even The Monster Squad. Now think of a werewolf within the past decade that gives you the same amount of feels. Anything specific come to mind? Any tingles?

If so, let me know because while we’ve seen countless iterations of zombies and witches. Vampires. Ghosts. Slashers…werewolves have barely made a scratch. And those scratches are few are far between.

One of those recent scratches came in the form of Lowell Dean’s WolfCop (2014) and Another WolfCop (2017). While they were hecking fun and hecking raunchy, they weren’t quite the type of werewolf film that I’ve been craving.

I need the kind of werewolf film that will slap my soul to the floor with a metaphor. I want a message in the guise of lycanthropy that not only tears its victims’ inside to shreds, but tears me apart inside. Werewolves are a complicated mass, and their stories have had the ability to massacre souls in the past. Today’s generation needs a film that will tears our hearts to shreds.

Speaking from a soul that wants to be massacred (metaphorically), I believe werewolves represent one major theme: power. If you look at any historical werewolf film, we see the journey from a regular person to a hairy beast that basically comes down to a power play. It’s about the loss of power as the werewolf, the inner beats, takes over. It’s also about the power the victim gains when the werewolf does take over while simultaneously being powerless from stopping the inner beast from taking over. This power struggle dichotomy is what makes the werewolf such a fascinating character.

This position of power as it relates to the concept of the werewolf came to me while watching a number of films recently. But it wasn’t until I sat down to watch 1984’s The Company of Wolves that that viewpoint slapped me right in the face.

In the film, Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) is a shy girl within a community who sees her as nothing but a pretty individual destined to become someone’s property. Her grandmother (Angela Lansbury) dotes on her continuously, sharing stories of the woods and werewolves that put women in peril. The local boy, dubbed Amorous Boy (Shane Johnstone), pursues her constantly. It isn’t until she is face to face with a werewolf that she realizes that she has the ability to be her own self. She can break free from the norms that have been set upon her by giving into the very aspect that her community constantly fights against.

“The pleasure would come from knowing the power that she had,” she says aloud as she caresses the werewolf - now in his human form - who just moments ago slaughtered her grandmother. She was hit with the realization that she did have a choice to decide what her life meant and, in that moment, she chose the way of the wolf. Its power showed her that she didn’t have to be what society was making her out to become.

On the opposite end of that spectrum, the Fitzgerald sisters of the Ginger Snap series struggle with the mark of the wolf. In John Fawcett’s Ginger Snaps (2000), Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) is bitten. She fights the curse at first…but as it runs deeper in her veins, she begins to accept the fact that she has no choice in the matter. The power that she gains over her personality, her surroundings, and her sexuality intoxicates her. The love that she has for her sister, Brigitte (Emily Perkins), is the only thing holding her back.

“Out by sixteen, or dead on the scene, but together forever, united against life as we know it,” is the sisters’ mantra for each other. The power in their bond holds true to that mantra.

That sisterly bond leads Brigitte to infect herself with Ginger’s blood in an act of swaying Ginger to stop her murderous ways. A self sacrifice, of sorts. But it’s also a demonstration that nothing will break the power of the sisters’ bond with each other.

The Company of Wolves and Ginger Snaps use lycanthropy as a coming-of-age formula. Becoming one with their animalistic side by becoming the wolf is a tragic, yet beautiful, metaphor for female empowerment. And in the Fitzgerald sisters’ case, it’s also strengthens the bond between two women who understand what the other is going through and who will be there to show support and encouragement.

What about the opposite end of the spectrum? After all, werewolves - although tragic - are the antagonist of most stories. For every David (An American Werewolf in London) there is an Uncle Ted (Bad Moon). The bloodlust and the power takes over the person, and their actual self begins to represent the nature of the werewolf.

Placing characters already in positions of power in the reins of the werewolf is the scariest way this can occur. Consider Stephen King’s Silver Bullet wherein the pastor of a community is the one cursed. Who’s going to believe that a man of God is the one committing ungodly acts? No one, which is the trouble that local kids Marty (Corey Haim) and Jane (Megan Follows) experience. While the film adaptation doesn’t take it nearly as far as it could have, it’s still a scary thought.

So why haven’t there been any recent films that take the position of power that werewolves own? With horror taking a more bolder approach to metaphor and focusing on characters from many different walks of life, the playing field is more open than ever.

I’d love to see a queer take on the werewolf story. There have been some in the past, but they border on camp. As a queer individual I love me some camp, but I believe the genre is ready for a hard hitting story that portrays the struggle of homosexuality and the acceptance of homosexuality via one’s self and the individuals who surround them.

Although it doesn’t follow that exact path, I have to discuss Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas’ Good Manners (2017). It is a lycanthrope love song about the many stages of a queer relationship. In the first half of the story, Clara (Isabél Zuaa) and Ana (Marjorie Estiano)’s relationship is one of the most organic and beautiful queer relationships presented in a horror film…let alone a werewolf film. The growth of their love is enriching, which makes what happens in the second half of the film even more appreciated.

Within that second half, we see Clara care for the werewolf child that fate placed into her hands. It is here that I saw the power struggles represented - albeit in a musical, werewolf film - of queer individuals who want families, but are constantly being overpowered by the possibility or the actuality of being denied that.

What I found most powerful about Good Manners is that the queer aspects are never used as a tactic to be controversial or to take away from the story. It is simply a story of two women who fall in love during a peculiar time of their lives, and how that love continues in a (werewolf) child who remains a symbol of Ana and Clara’s undying, powerful love.

Power. Werewolves. Queer. Good Manners puts all of those into one wonderful film. Perhaps it opened a door so that other queer stories can be told within the werewolf subgenre.

I would be remiss to not mention Adrián García Bogliano’s Late Phases, which focuses on the loss of power as we grow older, as well as Jonas Alexander Arnby’s When Animals Dream (2014), which is an incredible Danish film that would make a perfect double bill with either Ginger Snaps or The Company of Wolves.

I’m putting it out into the universe that we receive another powerful story via the eyes of a lycanthrope. Their lore is ripe enough. The time is ripe enough.

And I know my soul is damn ripe enough to be slapped silly by one.