Editorials
[Trailer Tracks] Dissecting the ‘A Werewolf Boy’ Trailer
Today’s entry:
A Werewolf Boy (Dir. Jo Sung-hee)
Introduction:
You may think this looks like a Twilight rip-off, but it’s easy to mistake most Asian cinema that isn’t focused on martial arts, gangsters, and vengeance as derivative of Twilight when in fact, they’ve been making crappy melodramas for decades. This one just looks particularly stupid.
The Setup:
So there’s this girl who lives out on a farm. Given the rural nature of her living space, she’s often in direct contact with all sorts of cute woodland creatures. Like a Korean Cinderella, the girl’s constantly surrounded by birds and squirrels and wolverines who help her get dressed and bake cakes with her and stuff like that. She probably has mild rabies.
Soon, the girl discovers that the cutest woodland creature of all is the A Werewolf Boy. The A Werewolf Boy is a boy who was raised by wolves to be A Werewolf Boy, but then he become such a good A Werewolf Boy that he overcame and ate his werewolf family. When the girl first meets the A Werewolf Boy, he’s covered in dirty and vomit and his skin looks like it has been rubbed off with sandpaper. So of course she feels sorry for him, and they have sex. (It’s okay because they both have rabies already.)
The girl decides that it’s her job to turn the A Werewolf Boy into an A BOY, so she puts clothes on him and teaches him how to use an abacus and comb his hair like an emo butthole. Before long they fall in love, which is weird for her. She doesn’t know how it all works, but she worries that if she gets married to an A Werewolf Boy it’ll literally turn her into a bitch.
The Problem:
Regular people don’t like A Werewolf BoyS because their animal instinct and strength tends to make real manly men look like Don Knotts. This prejudice is extremely strong in Asia, where guys will eat shark fins and suck milk from cow testicles just to prove that their wieners work.
On top of that, the only people who don’t want to kill the A Werewolf Boy on sight are scientists who want to kidnap him for study in labs. Soon the girl realizes that the only way to truly love the A Werewolf Boy is to set him free. But that’s not as easy as it looks. The A Werewolf Boy has feelings for her too and refuses to abandon her side. So, like John Lithgow in Harry and the Hendersons, she has to be super mean to A Werewolf Boy to make him think she hates him. It’s all very sad. But probably not as sad as it was in Harry in the Hendersons.
Love is so awful! How can she have her A Werewolf Boy without risking his death? What will her mother and father think of their forbidden love? Will he ever learn to eat without smacking his stupid lips like a dog? And seriously: If they get married does that means she becomes a bitch?
The Solution:
Regardless of what happens, the A Werewolf Boy is at some point going to have to turn into a werewolf and eat some people, maybe all the people. That much is given. If you go see this movie, and the A Werewolf Boy doesn’t eat anyone, you should try to get your money back. We’ve all had enough of neutered monsters in love on this side of the pond, thank you very much. It’s okay to ripoff Twilight, but not that part.
So let’s say the girl gets back together with the boy and they make a stand against the world. It will be bloody, but he’s a freaking A Werewolf Boy. Surely he can make short work of some dumb farmers and scientists.
With most of Korea murdered between his A Werewolf Boy jaws, the girl and her A Werewolf Boy can finally make a new start. But no nation on Earth will take him since he just ate a whole half-country. So the girl and her A Werewolf Boy turn to the stars instead, joining the Klingon Empire after a brief immigration test (battle to the death). The A Werewolf Boy never becomes a full human. But he makes a surprisingly great Klingon, known to all as A WEREWORF BOY.
Congratulations. You just read the longest set up to the lamest punchline in Internet history.
In Summation:
If everything I just said actually happens in the film, then it’s must-see material. A Korean riff on Twilight that crosses over into the Star Trek Universe should make just under $27 billion dollars just at my house alone. But you know that won’t be the film’s outcome. The best we can hope for is an ending where the A Werewolf Boy accidentally eats the girls face off.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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