The Wolf

The Wolf was inspired by two traumatic periods of my life. Growing up, my grandparents abused our family for years using religion to control us. In order to escape, I would listen to the radio or watch films, coming up with fantastical stories to take me far away. When the time was right, I applied to Ohio University’s School of Film in order to make my dream to become a filmmaker come true. This is where I met another graduate student who shared the same abusive past. At least...that’s what he told me in order to gain my trust. One day this “friend” sexually harassed and threatened me, trying to convince me to “drop my power” so he could control me. I was putting up with abusive behavior in order to hold a friendship together…just like what my family went through over twenty years ago. Both of these experiences illustrate cult mentality in its simplest form: the abuser who tells the victim everything that they want to hear while manipulating the victim’s weak spots in order to feed the abuser’s needs. I have been an artist and a filmmaker for as long as I can remember that helped me say what I was afraid to concerning my childhood abuse and my current battle against sexual harassment from the people who I once loved the most. In creating The Wolf, I stopped running away from my past and went back into the woods one last time to face my fears stemmed from the past and of what will come in the future. I am eternally grateful for the #MeToo movement and how it has provided a window for victims to share our stories and realize that we are no longer utterly alone in our pain and trauma. The Wolf is my own #MeToo story and what an unbelievably difficult story it was for me to tell, but I hope that others who have experienced the same pain can find some comfort in this film, use it as a mirror of what might be going on within their own abusive situation, realize that they do have more power than they were led to believe by their abusers and to set themselves free. Instead of lowering herself to The Wolf’s level of using violence as a means to an end, Collette makes the decision to walk away from a situation where violence doesn’t solve anything, stopping the cycle of abuse once and for all. As the film draws to a close, Collette finds the courage to tell Clint “You tell me that you’re sorry and, in the dream, I believe you.”