This weekend at WonderCon, Netflix teased werewolf fans with a scene from their upcoming 13-episode series Hemlock Grove. For those of us who couldn’t be in Anaheim, IGN has posted the 127-second transformation scene on YouTube. Let’s watch it together, shall we? I hope you haven’t eaten recently – dinner will be served at the end.
Cue the whining from werewolf aficionados who, like myself, have not actually finished reading the book. I know, I know, all that hurly-burly just to arrive at “a regular wolf” is kind of an anticlimax, right? Well, calm yourself: this scene takes place in the first 60 pages of the book (and probably at the end of the second episode), and some people who know my sensibilities and who actually make the time to read for pleasure have told me that things “get better”. I’ll find out for myself, soon – I’m travelling for work this week, so I’ll have some time to finish reading the book before the series premieres on the 19th.
I can’t get behind the “wolf under the skin” style of transformation for reasons too pedantic to discuss here, but as a re-creation of the scene as written, both technically and stylistically, I think this video was excellent. Some of the more gory shots, like the emergence of the muzzle, made me a bit squeamish… but what else was I expecting from the guy who wrote and directed Hostel?