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If you’ve always complained about the dominance of digital peculiar effects in modern Hollywood movies, Werewolves was made for you. The fresh action-horror movie, now available for digital rental or purchase, has a delicious premise — a year ago, a supermoon turned a billion people into werewolves for 1 night. Now, it’s about to happen again, and it’s up to the most jacked molecular biologist in the planet (Frank Grillo) to halt it. It besides relies almost entirely on applicable werewolf effects, crafted with large care.

Director Steven C. Miller tells Polygon that he knew from the start that he wanted his pulpy thriller to have as many applicable werewolves as possible. He painstakingly worked with effects maestro Alec Gillis and an experienced squad with a background at The Jim Henson Company to make an army of hulking 8-foot-tall beasts that could lay siege to the world.

Miller, who calls the movie “a crazy 1 to make,” has applicable experience making action films (Marauders, Escape Plan 2: Hades) and horror films (Automaton Transfusion, Silent Night), and he was able to combine these experiences for a ludicrously fun midnight movie. (Next up for him: an action-comedy called Under Fire with Dylan Sprouse and Mason Gooding, with an eye on a 2025 release.)

Polygon spoke with Miller about his doctrine on applicable effects, the details on how Werewolves’ creatures were put together, and the challenges that come with specified an ambitious project.

This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.

Polygon: I wanted to talk specifically about the werewolf design, which is simply quite a few fun and very different from what we’re seeing from most modern creature designs in movies. erstwhile you first joined the project, what were your immediate priorities on how you wanted the werewolves to look?

Steven C. Miller: Look, my immediate precedence was practical, right? How many applicable werewolves can I put on screen? That was important. And then it became about how I could make them look as menacing as I can. due to the fact that I felt like [cinema] kind of went distant from that for a while, where they became either humanoid wolves or they became sparkly wolves, or they were just wolves, literal wolves in the wild. So for me, it was about trying to get back to that classical ’80s kind of “man in a suit” vibe, and inactive give them any bulk and make them as menacing as possible.

Were there any smaller decisions you were peculiarly happy about in evoking that kind of feeling? I’m reasoning specifically about how the heads are designed.

I mean, the heads were a large deal, right? Especially the elongated snout, and making that snout feel like it was even a small bit more raptor than wolf. That gave it a small bit more of a menacing tone, with the teeth and how long it was. And then the head being bigger almost than the body, than the shoulders, made it feel besides a small bit more heavy. And it truly was more dense for the guys in the suits.

And then all of the animatronics that were built inside the head — those guys did specified a fantastic occupation of maneuvering. all item of that face was maneuverable, even down to the snout, to the teeth, to the drool, to the tongue. It could do anything I needed it to do on cue. So having all of that freedom truly allowed me to play with the wolves and give them emotion and a kind of vibe that I hadn’t seen in a while.

What’s the breakdown of how the animatronics fit together?

You have the basic suit that the performer would put on, which was about 50 pounds, 60 pounds. These guys in these suits are most likely 7-foot-ish, and then the head is about another foot. erstwhile it goes on, the head attaches so the performer’s actually looking out the neck hole. So all of the animatronics inside are maneuvering the head completely. Whatever motion that head is doing is being controlled by animatronics. The performer is truly only moving the body.

So you can imagine, erstwhile he actually puts his head down to get into wolf form, he’s almost completely blind. He’s just fundamentally looking at the ground. So everything was choreographed truly without their heads on, almost like a dance. And then they had to memorize it and go into all of these fight sequences almost in the dark, trying to do them as memorization. So if you do that on top of having the animatronic guys moving all of the gizmos in the head and all of that, having to match synchronicity-wise, it was just a immense undertaking. But the crew was just so large at figuring it out. It was quite a few fun.

Who handled the animatronics?

It’s a circumstantial squad that [werewolf designer/effects creator] Alec Gillis brought on. It was his squad of puppeteers. I know quite a few them worked truly heavy with Muppets and Fraggle Rock. They were really, truly talented individuals who understood how to move, animatronic-wise. And they should be truly good listeners, due to the fact that they’re proceeding me shout out all different kinds of movements, and they’re having to do that instantaneously or effort to make that work with whatever the wolf performer is doing inside the body.

We had so much fun — whenever the wolf performer would come up and talk to me, I asked the performers if they would decision the wolf mouth while he was talking.

It must’ve felt like a blessing to be able to have people who’ve worked with The Jim Henson Company on a task like this — you’re bringing in the best.

And that, to me, was crucial erstwhile you’re doing a werewolf movie. erstwhile you’re doing a movie called Werewolves, if the werewolves don’t work, the movie doesn’t work. And so from day one, all of the money we had truly went toward Alec Gillis and his squad creating the wolves. It went toward the animatronics.

We shot all this in Puerto Rico, so you gotta bring this full squad to Puerto Rico. quite a few people don’t truly realize that on a tiny budget like this, bringing anyone from the States to a location and having to home them, and everything that takes, is simply a immense expense on a tiny movie like this. So we truly made it a point that we were going to take on that, due to the fact that we felt like they were truly the most crucial pieces of the movie. We dove in headfirst.

Sometimes these kinds of applicable effects get augmented in post with VFX; sometimes they don’t. What was your approach on Werewolves?

My approach was, I didn’t want to contact them after I shot ’em. If there was a werewolf on screen that wasn’t digitally created from the beginning, it was not touched. The suit is what the suit is. We didn’t clean up anything. We didn’t contact it digitally. evidently there’s colour correction going, but as far as touching up or cleaning up, I truly refuse to do it, due to the fact that I truly wanted the movie to stand on its own and give Alec and them — I just trusted them that much. I felt like [the werewolves] looked good adequate on screen that I wanted the art to show. I didn’t want to contact that.

I wanted to let them be what they were. And if it was a tad clunky, I felt like that was the vibe, and that gave it the flavor I was looking for anyway, that ’80s material that they had. They didn’t have ways to contact [effects] up later back then. So you live with it, and I liked it.

You suggested there are also werewolves on screen that weren’t applicable — I’m guessing any were digital effects in the background for scale?

In the background, we had digital guys that were giving us any effects — more of the werewolves moving through the town square. I think there’s like 3 of ’em. But the cool thing about that is, even the visual effects supervisor was on from day one. So I had him in there with our applicable creators, hands on, scanning everything from the beginning, so the digital effects were matching my applicable effects, and not the another way around. It tends to happen sometimes erstwhile you get to post-production, you’re like, Oh no, we request to make these things, and they’re creating it based on not being there. So with the visual effects and applicable [teams] being there together, I was able to make calls of saying, “Hey, these guys are going to look a certain way.” I request the visual effects to besides feel just as, for deficiency of a better word, clunky as the original, and not have this overly overt smoothness that these guys couldn’t do. So yeah, they all were working as one, and it came together truly well.

This is an ongoing discussion, both in Hollywood and outside of it, about the dichotomy between applicable and visual effects. Is that something you felt peculiarly powerfully about just for this movie? Or is that a doctrine you hold in general?

I am a fan of artists, and I was beautiful adamant in my first posts erstwhile the trailer came out that people understood the movie is 90% practical, but the 10% that are visual effects are truly fucking strong. And that I was going to stand behind the visual effects artists that did quite a few work on this movie, and made certain they got their due, due to the fact that they did do any truly large work. They created any truly large wolves that, in my opinion, it’s hard to tell if they’re there or not.

I mean, there’s visual effects in this movie that you wouldn’t know [were there]. The roof opening, for instance, is all visual effects. Those guys did a truly fantastic occupation themselves. I’m just a large fan of artists — I think all of that [digital work] can be done well and can be done together, and people wouldn’t have any idea. So it’s tough for me erstwhile people are like, “Oh no, it can only be practical.” I disagree. I like the thought of having fresh school and old school married together. It’s all about uplifting the work of artists.

These kinds of applicable suits and animatronic rigs, and the experts to make them work, can be very costly — which may be 1 reason quite a few movies go for digital effects, which have gotten cheaper. But another reason is that complicated applicable effects can make limitations in terms of what you can shoot and how you can shoot. How did that come up for you on this movie? How did you work around your barriers?

The biggest limitations are erstwhile you want [the werewolves] to get into gigantic fights. We have a full series where wolves are fighting each another at the end in rain, and they’re on wires. So at those points, you start to truly feel their limitations, and you gotta truly start tapping into that creative gene if you’re going to stick with the thought of it being practical. My DP was truly large at figuring out how to light them and shoot them. And then it’s just about coming up with truly creative, clever solutions. You almost feel like you’re like a kid again in the backyard with your friends, trying to find out What’s the best way we could make this character do this without any fancy equipment? We did 1 where we would set the wolf on the bed of a truck, and we would shoot off the bed of the truck. So it looks like he’s running, but he’s just sitting on a truck. You know what I mean? So you just start getting truly creative. Things start flowing out of this kind of stuff. And to me, that’s erstwhile the best ideas come out.

I besides felt like there was any creativity from a storytelling position too. 1 of my favourite elements of this movie is it feels like, Forget even making a first movie, we’re just going to make a movie that feels like a sequel. That’s so much fun — especially due to the fact that I would imagine trying to make the first movie, where a billion people turn into werewolves, was not going to be a applicable possibility.

Yeah, exactly. And I besides felt like the audience has seen that movie. Creating it in your brain, even though we’re only giving you small bits and pieces here, you can imagine what that another planet could be, even if we couldn’t get there yet. I feel like that’s a lost art in quite a few movies, where they feel like they gotta tell you all single thing, due to the fact that they think younger audiences won’t get it. Well, I disagree. I think younger audiences are truly smart, and I think they’re besides enjoying the ride, and they want to have any fun reasoning about it as they go. So that’s what we were trying to do.

This movie truly harkens back to a certain era of pulpy midnight thriller, with the werewolves’ designs and the plot. 1 of my favourite details is ripped-as-hell Frank Grillo being 1 of the world’s premier molecular biologists. I love that. That feels like specified a throwback to ’80s action characters. Did you grow up watching and loving those kinds of movies?

I grew up watching those for sure. I feel like I’m an ’80s kid at heart erstwhile it comes to movies, and I like cinema as far as where you were able to suspend your disbelief and just watch the movie and have fun. That’s what I did increasing up, and that’s what those movies were. They didn’t care if the character looked the part, as far as being a biologist, but he was the guy that was going to save the day.

That harkens back to movies like Terminator, the kind of movies I grew up loving and enjoying — Alien, Aliens, those kinds of movies. Your everyday character was going to take control and save the day. Pulp and cheese. You just want to throw it all at the screen and let the audience just have a blast.

Werewolves is available for digital rental/purchase on Amazon and Apple TV.