In both The Wolf of Snow Hollow and his previous feature, Thunder Road, writer-director-star Jim Cummings tries to thread an extremely tiny needle. Both idiosyncratic movies juggle earnestness, anger, and cringe comedy—often all in the same scene. That’s hard enough to pull off in a character study like Thunder Road, where Cummings played a blunderingly unstable police officer. It’s especially difficult with a horror film like Snow Hollow, which has certain genre beats to hit and conventions to follow. Cummings once again plays a cop, John Marshall, who shares some tendencies with his Thunder Road character, including an extremely thin skin and a penchant for embarrassingly blurted confessions. (Both men could be early Jim Carrey characters if they existed in real life.) The divorced father of a daughter headed to college, as well as a recovering alcoholic, John already seems on the edge of a nervous breakdown before a series of gruesome murders take place in his small Utah town—and all signs point to a werewolf. Aside from an eerie opening-credits sequence, in which cinematographer Natalie Kingston’s picturesque landscape imagery is superimposed upon itself (and even flipped upside down), The Wolf of Snow Hollow doesn’t offer all that much as a horror film (there’s a repetitive, unimaginative score, as well as an overly complicated editing scheme that often negates the tension). And so Cummings’ performance, as in Thunder Road, is the most compelling element. Too bad that the movie is so busy chasing clues and keeping up with supporting characters that John fades in the background, even as he’s constantly shouting at everyone. Cummings is a unique talent; Snow Hollow is just an awkward fit, beyond the ways he intends.
