One of the highlights of film festivals is peeking ahead at industry trends. This year’s Fantastic Fest is no different. Sifting through the program notes, one would probably conclude that feel-bad movies and creature features are the hot new trends – and under normal circumstances, this would bode well for a movie like Coyotes, the new animal attack movie from Grave Encounters co-director Colin Minihan. But Coyotes also taps into another industry trend, this one not so favorable: the place of generative AI in an industry where flesh-and-blood creatives are fighting to keep their jobs alive.
After building their dream home in the Hollywood hills, Scott (Justin Long) and Liv (Kate Bosworth) are ready to focus on being a family. So what if Scott is only half-present during most of their family activities? His career in the entertainment industry has really started to take off, and it’s that success that allows them to provide the lifestyle they’ve always dreamed of for their daughter Chloe (Mila Harris). With only a few small maintenance jobs remaining on the property, the family can focus on repairing the relationships that have been strained over the past few years of hustle and grind.
Of course, living the Hollywood lifestyle does not come without its downsides. For one, Scott and Liv struggle to coexist with their neighbor Trip (Norbert Leo Butz), a new money hedonist with a, ah, neverending guest list. And things go from annoying to worse when a windstorm blows through the hills, knocking out the family’s power and parking a tree on their SUV. But all of that is child’s play compared to the following morning, when the property is suddenly surrounded by a pack of feral coyotes. These creatures have an appetite for human flesh and an unhealthy fixation on the family’s home, and soon Scott will learn if he has what it takes to really provide for his family.
From the jump, it’s pretty obvious that Minihan and company want to position Coyotes as an Amblin Entertainment-era creature feature. Characters are introduced in the form of comic book panels, a nod to Scott’s (somehow) lucrative career as a comic book artist and as a shorthand to establish the film’s playful balance between horror and comedy. Coyotes even has its own John Goodman in the form of Keir O'Donnell, a pest control expert who eventually wages a one-on-one war against the remaining creatures. He offers to kill Chloe’s dog free of charge. Pretty standard ‘80s stuff.
And to the film’s credit, there are moments where Coyotes achieves this desired breeziness. Most of this is owed to Long and Bosworth, whose real-life chemistry carries over into their role as a married couple in the film. Long has earned his renaissance in the horror genre through a series of smart projects and a willingness to move behind the camera; his short in V/H/S/Beyond, another Fantastic Fest debut, showed he has more affection for Kevin Smith’s Tusk than the rest of the world combined. Meanwhile, Bosworth is tasked with turning the normal beleaguered movie wife into something of substance, and does so with aplomb.
But Tad Daggerhart and Nick Simon’s script is too preoccupied with its own character bits – such as Brittany Allen’s rightwing sex worker – to make the concept work without the heavy lifting of the special effects team. Most creature features live or die with the design of their animals, and here Coyotes faces a near-fatal issue: the look and feel of the coyotes is going to raise a lot of questions about how, exactly, those animations were created.
Whenever the coyotes are shown head-on, their animation bears a striking resemblance to those of generative platforms like Midjourney. We are given multiple shots of coyotes frozen mid-snarl, but the more we see them, the more we notice the little irregularities in the photography. Audiences will see the subtle mismatches in lighting and texture between subject and background and draw their own conclusions. Thanks to the trailer, they already have.
Did Coyotes use generative AI in the creation of these creatures? Let’s be charitable and say it doesn’t matter. What we see on the screen is far from impressive, and by the time embargo breaks on this review, the buzz on the special effects will have already spread to audiences who would otherwise be interested in the film. Margins are everything in independent cinema, and whatever money the producers might’ve saved on their special effects they might just lose in word of mouth. It’s a shame no one thought to shake some puppets at the screen instead.
It’s hard to imagine Coyotes being a successful crowdpleaser at a festival which celebrates analog technology and practical effects above all else. But even if we don’t overindex on the visual effects of the film, Minihan’s latest is a far cry from the inventive filmmaking that put him on the map with the Grave Encounters franchise. Long and Bosworth may be innocent here - as performers, at least, if not as executive producers - but Coyotes fails to capture any of the magic needed to be a good creature feature. [2.5/5.0]
