“To Kill a Wolf” (2024) marks Kelsey Taylor’s feature directorial debut, but it comes from such an assured creative place that it’s hard to believe it’s only her first. The film is essentially a retelling of a familiar tale. As the logline suggests, it reimagines Little Red Riding Hood in a modern setting. Despite being adapted and retold across many decades, the story has often centered on a deceiver who can put on a fake appearance to feign kindness or innocence — and their victim, seeking redemption.
Taylor’s film turns that premise into a tale of quiet resilience. It is also about someone seeking safety and comfort while recovering from the blow of a brutal emotional trauma. The script doesn’t lay out all its details at once but gradually reveals them. Initially, we meet a middle-aged man (Ivan Martin), dubbed the Woodsman, going about his daily routine in the wild. He cuts wood, goes to a store to buy groceries, and returns to his cottage. As he drives back, people look at him suspiciously, making him seem like a pariah. Yet, we don’t see or sense anything problematic about him.
The Woodsman’s life is monotonous, but peaceful. He is a recluse, but doesn’t let his nature get in the way of anything or anyone else. One day, while wandering in the forest, he finds Dani (Maddison Brown), a teenage girl, lying on the ground, unconscious. He carries her and treats her as if she were part of his family. They form a strong emotional bond, for reasons yet unknown and unclear. Still, he offers her strength and courage to step into a world away from her place of comfort.
Apart from him, the film introduces Dani’s aunt, Jolene (Kaitlin Doubleday), and her husband, Carey (Michael Esper), who are about to take Dani in after an emotionally challenging chapter in her life. Much like Dani or the Woodsman, they have to deal with their past baggage. It all becomes part of a film that rewards you better when you know as little about it as possible. It lets you in on the details about their lives as soon as they start opening up — which is challenging when you get consistently told to feel ashamed of being honest or vulnerable.
Whether shame or remorse, Taylor’s script delicately handles their moments of emotional revelations and offers grace where needed. She builds these profound connections between her characters with overwhelming burdens.
There’s plenty to admire in her profoundly suspenseful film, where things seem to be only a few steps away from falling apart. It explores Dani’s perpetual dilemma in choosing between the familiar faces around her to trust, only to feel hurt, abandoned, or betrayed along the way. Taylor’s direction fills you with dread as Dani finds only a sliver of hope to survive in her world.
The film graciously acknowledges the characters’ small wins and presents them with a deeply personal subtext. Yet, it also understands that there’s a world that lies beyond those accomplishments. It doesn’t treat those moments as a final act of catharsis. Instead, it lets them seem like only one of the beginnings. So, every further revelation hints of a following journey rather than offering a definitive conclusion.
That’s why, while a tender drama about one’s survival, “To Kill a Wolf” feels like a slow-burn mystery thriller. As the characters learn to find a way out of their trauma, the film offers them a window into a potential future with more hope and less hiding away from the world.
The performances are key to letting the film feel like a coherent piece. Ivan Martin’s layered performance breathes so much life into his character, who is woefully muted. Martin also maintains a sense of ambiguity about the Woodsman, which plays into the film’s intrinsic themes of deceptive identities.
He makes this man feel like an enigma, often keeping us a step away from what he is truly feeling. Michael Esper manages something similar with his understated performance, while letting his presence linger in our minds even when he is not on screen. Besides them, Maddison Brown offers a lived-in experience of Dani’s transformative arc, letting us feel her agony even through her silences.
Taylor primarily uses the wilderness and seemingly deserted suburban neighborhoods as a setting to follow these solitary journeys. These places offer a quiet isolation from the outside world, which lends itself to the film’s overall nature. Taylor uses them expertly to let the psychological complexities of her script present organically instead of rushing through her narrative flow. It’s this approach that keeps you thinking about these characters, hoping they heal as they hope to.
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