Julia Garner, who made her breakthrough in hit crime drama series Ozark, plays a woman driven to desperate measures in Wolf Man, a new werewolf movie with a difference.
The film from industrious independent movie studio Blumhouse and Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell is no ordinary creature feature.
When Blake (Christopher Abbott), a San Francisco husband and father, inherits his remote childhood home in rural Oregon, he sees it as a chance to start afresh with his wife, journalist Charlotte (Garner), and their young daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth).
However, their new domestic idyll is shattered when a terrifying figure from Blake's childhood come crashing back into his life.
It may be a body shock horror about a family man turning into a werewolf but at its heart Wolf Man is really a story about connection and grief and the disintegration of a young family. It's as likely to pull on your heart strings than give you the frighteners.
The movie is essentially a three-hander between Garner, who has also starred in TV dramas Girls and The Americans, Abbott (Poor Things) and Firth (Hullraisers and Coma), who was only ten when she acted in Wolf Man.
"She’s so great in this film. It was so amazing to see her blossom," says Garner. "I feel that working with a child makes you a better actor because kids force you to be present in a way and they’re so unpredictable so you always have to ready in a way. I loved working with Matilda. She’s just so sweet and talented."
Garner had appeared on screen with Abbott before when acted in psychological thriller Martha Marcy May Marlene back in 2011
"I started acting in 2010 and that was my first movie and Chris was in it, so it was very early on for him too," she says. "That was my first movie set I’d been on. I think I’d been acting for five months at that point. I was still in high school.
"It was definitely trippy to be working with Chris again because it was the same but different."
Wolf Man is set in the vastness of rural Oregon but it was filmed on South Island in New Zealand.
"I was there for three months," says Garner. "New Zealand’s beautiful. We shot a lot of the interiors in Wellington and then we went to the South Island. New Zealand’s amazing, the people are incredible, as were the crew. It was a great crew. I feel so lucky because this wasn’t as easy shoot.
"It was grueling hours and most of what we did was night shoots and it was very cold outside. I was running for half of the day and crying . . . I cannot use a tear stick, the actor in me refused to use a tear stick so the amount of water I drank on this film to produce tears is kind of crazy!"
Wolf Man is in cinemas this Friday
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