Coyotes

A vapid influencer in the Hollywood Hills is taking selfies at night when something in the bushes attacks her small dog. She approaches, sees the animal that just made a meal of her pet, and backs away in horror. Just then—wham—a passing vehicle runs her over and speeds away from the accident, leaving her twitching and primed to become coyote food. She’s just the first of many characters to succumb to the bloodthirsty pack in Coyotes, a promising when-animals-attack concept that suffers from a derivative script and an endless barrage of clichés. Despite its affable cast—among them, Justin Long and Kate Bosworth, reteaming after the underrated vampire flick House of Darkness (2022)—the material never quite finds its balance between a winking horror-comedy and a family’s survival story. 

Colin Minihan (What Keeps You Alive, 2018) directs a neat idea from a script by Tad Daggerhart and Nick Simon, writers who seem to have had no life experience outside of watching movies. Not one moment in Coyotes feels genuine or original, and most scenes recall other, better antecedents. The characters have a brief conversation about Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), while more than once the velociraptors from Jurassic Park (1993) come to mind (“They can open doors?!”). There’s also a hint of the home invasion thriller Straw Dogs (1971), with Long playing Scott, the resident ineffectual husband and father who writes comic books and faints at the sight of blood, much to the disappointment of his wife, Liv (Kate Bosworth), and teen daughter Chloe (Mila Harris). (Note: Bosworth starred in the 2011 remake of Straw Dogs.) Minihan also alludes to Aliens (1986) more than once. 

Indeed, Coyotes plays like it was written by two dudes who sat around a laptop, sharing moments from their favorite movies and working them into their script. The scenario involves a windstorm knocking down a tree in Scott and Liv’s yard, wrecking their vehicle, and leaving them without power. Meanwhile, the movie introduces side characters almost as quickly as it disposes of them—each cornered and turned into a meal by three or four snarling, feral beasts. Each future victim tries to shoo the growling prairie wolf away, but it’s too late; they have tasted influencer blood and hunger for more. At least Minihan serves up a substantial body count for horror fans, with each character, no matter how minor, introduced by a flashy comic-book-style intro card that resembles a generic Canva template. Eventually, the coyotes launch an attack on Scott and Liv, and a desperate fight for survival ensues. 

Most of the terror to come is undercut by the look of Coyotes’ groan-worthy CGI animals, which appear glossy and fake. They were almost certainly animated using artificial intelligence rather than human digital artists. Even with the occasional real-life footage and a few puppets to round out their presence, the coyotes never evoke genuine terror, but rather the confusion brought about by unconvincing AI creations that seldom appear in the same frame as live-action humans. Minihan attempts to enliven the proceedings with split-screen telephone calls and wacky characters—a coked-up neighbor with a missing cat (Norbert Leo Butz), a sex worker (Brittany Allen), Scott’s Irish best friend (Kevin Glynn), and a kooky exterminator (Keir O’Donnell). However, the movie’s glib tone and embarrassingly cartoonish VFX nullify any hope of genuine scares. 

The hyperactive opening credits sequence features news broadcasts that explain how wildfires have driven coyotes into residential areas around Hollywood, inciting confrontations between animals and humans. That’s an environmental commentary of sorts, I suppose. But it’s more like the stated impetus than a reinforced message. Even less convincing are the dramatic scenes involving Scott’s workaholic detachment from the family, with Liv’s emotional, if untimely, heart-to-heart as she cleans his enormous gash from a coyote attack. The movie might have thrived had it leaned more into its humor and less on forced moments of drama. At least the climactic scene earns points for some adorable coyote pups, but not much else about the movie works, and Coyotes never lives up to its likable cast and terrifying premise.