Think of the big bad wolf or Little Red Riding Hood. Nearly every child in the English-speaking world is introduced to the villainous wolf from a young age. They\u2019re cunning, cruel and ravenous. <\/p>\n
However, we don\u2019t leave that imagery behind us in childhood. Horror cinema keeps our nightmares full of wolves, drawing on familiar \u2013 and often entirely false \u2013 tropes. Recent films offer some particularly clear examples.<\/p>\n
In Guillermo Del Toro\u2019s recent adaptation of Frankenstein<\/a>, wolves are depicted as villains. After escaping Dr Frankenstein, the monster takes refuge in an isolated farmstead and tries to help its residents. Twice, wolves descend on the farmstead \u2013 not only taking sheep but breaking into the house and attacking humans.<\/p>\n During the first attack, the monster muses that<\/a> \u201cthe hunter did not hate the wolf. The wolf did not hate the sheep. But violence felt inevitable between them. This was the way of the world. It would hunt you and kill you, just for being who you are.\u201d Del Toro uses wolves as a metaphor for the world\u2019s brutality. To make that connection, he depicts conflict between wolf and human as \u201cinevitable\u201d, along with portraying wolves \u2013 very inaccurately \u2013 as determined home invaders.<\/p>\n This negative portrayal is not drawn from Mary Shelley\u2019s novel, which contains no such scenes. Del Toro appears to have inserted it to heighten tension and scare viewers.<\/p>\n Metaphors and monsters<\/p>\n Robert Eggers\u2019s Nosferatu offers another recent big budget example. When Nicholas Hoult\u2019s character tried to escape the vampire Count Orlok\u2019s castle, he is pursued by a pack of wolves. This is very close to older fairytale wolf characters, depicted as overtly evil or demonic.<\/p>\n This was reinforced by the film\u2019s promotional campaign. In a widely reported interview<\/a>, Hoult claimed he was \u201cnearly attacked\u201d by \u201creal wolves\u201d. In fact, the animals involved were Czech shepherd dogs who played their roles a little too convincingly \u2013 not wolves at all. Horror producers sometimes play up events like this<\/a> to heighten the sense of threat<\/a> and drum up ticket sales, in this case using an erroneous wolf attack to do so.<\/p>\n Hoult narrowly escapes the Czech shepherd dogs. This isn\u2019t limited to big budget cinema. A recent independent horror, Out Come The Wolves<\/a>, shows two men and a woman who are attacked by wolves on a weekend getaway. Meanwhile, a menacing love triangle plot plays out in which a jealous would-be lover abandons his competition to a wolf attack.<\/p>\n The behaviour of wild predators is presented as an allegory for an opportunistic approach to romance. All\u2019s fair in love and wolves. The film also contains an explicit reference to wolf reintroduction: when hearing about the wolf attack, one character is sceptical, saying \u201cthere haven\u2019t been wolves in this area for years!\u201d The message here is clear: as wolves come back to a landscape, so does the danger of attack.<\/p>\n Each of these films draws on existing tropes and fears in slightly different ways. This is what horror does as a genre: works with what scares us already and amplifies it for entertainment. But, in doing so, as high profile cinema events, they risk playing into inaccurate public perceptions. And because most people in Britain and Ireland will never encounter a wolf in the wild, these fictional wolves become their reference points.<\/p>\n On screen v reality<\/p>\n There are valid concerns<\/a> around wolves preying on sheep, calves or other livestock, but attacks on humans are extremely rare<\/a>. A pack of wolves surrounding and repeatedly terrorising a home simply doesn\u2019t happen. <\/p>\n There is a strong ecological case for reintroducing wolves where they once lived. As apex predators they reduce populations of deer and other animals which can otherwise damage the environment, often by overgrazing. In Yellowstone national park in the US, grey wolf reintroductions triggered a cascade of unexpected biodiversity benefits<\/a>, as overgrazing elk were forced on the move, trees recovered, rivers stabilised and beaver populations grew.<\/p>\n When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, scientists had an \u2018almost unique\u2019 chance to study what happens when an ecosystem becomes whole again. The same is happening<\/a> in Europe as wolves spread back into their original range. But to reintroduce wolves to the UK or Ireland, conservationists would have to physically transport them there. Opinion polls show approval rates of 52% in Ireland<\/a> and just 36% in the UK<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to extract these numbers from the cumulative effect of centuries of storytelling, from ancient folklore through Victorian gothic novels to modern Hollywood horror. They all contribute to the idea that wolves are dangerous, unpredictable, and should be nowhere near humans. <\/p>\n It\u2019s meant as entertainment. But horror\u2019s ongoing reliance on the wolf as a symbol of evil or violence may be damaging efforts to promote coexistence with healthy wild populations. Our natural landscapes need wolves. And right now, wolves need all the good PR they can get.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t have time to read about climate change as much as you\u2019d like?![\"Still](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/file-20251202-66-sogb94.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n Aidan Monaghan\/Universal Pictures<\/p>\n![\"Wolf](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/file-20251202-56-6tqtgj.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n Agnieszka Bacal \/ shutterstock<\/p>\n![\"Imagine](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1764775092_3_file-20250110-17-yge7uv.png\")
<\/p>\n
\n
Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead.<\/a> Every Wednesday, The Conversation\u2019s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 47,000+ readers who\u2019ve subscribed so far.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wolves are returning across Europe \u2013 but not to the UK and Ireland, where public support is lukewarm…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":{"0":"post-325192","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}