Werewolf mythos is an intricate, expansive mass. There’s plenty of ways one becomes a werewolf, and the resulting lycanthropes come in all shapes and sizes: some are more man than beast, others are in a weird limbo between the two. One part of lore that manages to worm its way into the vast majority of werewolf media in one way or another is the creature’s guaranteed kryptonite— silver.
Sean Ellis’ Eight for Silver aims to take a more original crack at werewolf lore, while still keeping very true to the influence of silver. Gone are the lengthy transformation scenes, the full moons, and the internal turmoil of embracing animalistic instincts; instead Ellis gives something closer to a comeuppance tale about the downfalls of extreme avarice. And while a Gothic spin on werewolves has a lot of room for interesting developments, unfortunately Eight for Silver is remarkably dull
Eight from Silver is a film heavily reliant on striking visuals which it provides in spades. The hauntingly beautiful moors of the Laurent family’s estate and its surrounding forest provide an authentically Gothic atmosphere for a mythical creature to use as stalking grounds. Watching young Charlotte (Amelia Crouch) and her peers stand in the tall grass is terrifying in itself. Even the obvious CG visuals of the cold open’s World War I trenches are still atmospherically beautiful. Opposingly, the gore presented during the runtime is nasty. From up-close bullet removals to partially severed wrists, and of course, the bite wounds the gore in the film is a beautifully disgusting mess. While the appearance of the creature is more skin-wolf than a traditional werewolf, it’s still an interesting design nonetheless.
Apart from its visuals, the film is contrastingly boring. None of the characters exhibit any amount of depth, they’re all closer to standard archetypes than something fleshed out. Patriarch Seamus (Alistair Petrie) is a greedy, ruthless landowner that only feels remorse when the consequences of his actions directly affect him. His wife Isabelle (Kelly Reilly) is essentially a set-piece alongside police constable Alfred Moliere (Nigel Betts). The most egregiously by-the-book character is pathologist John McBride (Boyd Holbrook): a mysterious man with a tragic past looking to exact revenge on the creature that ruined his life—an Abraham van Helsing clone in short. It works for the obviously Gothic homage the film is going for but, especially since the werewolf itself has such little screen presence, the lack of interesting characterization is a letdown.
What really sinks Eight for Silver is its use of the harmful and outdated trope of the “Romani Curse”. Yes, this is what replaces the Trans Energy (and trust me, I know the Trans Energy of werewolf movies) of the internal struggle between embracing being something viewed as dangerous or repressing the feelings until death: the choice to make werewolves the result of a Biblical curse. The inherent transness of werewolf films is the feeling of being trapped in a prison of flesh. The feeling of losing control of your bodily autonomy, feeling it change in ways you never wanted it to. This alongside the societal stigma against trans people leaves us feeling like monsters, something less than human. Films like An American Werewolf in London and the first two Ginger Snaps films capture this duality of fear of your own body alongside the eventual acceptance of the power of being a monster. Eight for Silver negates this energy completely.
Seamus and his fellow councilmen of wealthy landowners evict (and by evict I mean pillage, torture, and brutally execute) a small group of Romani people living on land they’ve had a claim to for nearly a century– a common practice for the time. When Romani people first migrated to Britain in the 16th century they were immediately faced with persecution and enslavement. While most explicitly anti-Romani laws were repealed by the end of the 1780s, prejudice still ran strong. During the period the film is set, Romanis were regularly arrested and sometimes killed for false indictments of minor crimes, and eviction from lands families had settled on for centuries was a common activity for greedy white landowners. In the film the Romani fight back from beyond the grave through the pillaged silver coins and wolf teeth the Council takes hold of– silver that is purportedly forged from the same materials of the thirty pieces of silver Judas received for betraying Jesus. While there is an obvious “reap what you sow” undercurrent of the amoral white overlords getting their comeuppance via death, associating such a heavily persecuted group with revenge and dark magic is hackneyed and in poor taste.
Eight for Silver had a lot of potential: its setting and concurrent choice to diverge from typical werewolf lore allowed for so much exploration for an established monster. However, the suspicious lack of werewolves, the incredibly bland central characters, and the misinformed and insensitive depiction of a colonized group as evil tank the execution. For all its efforts to be something new, Eight for Silver, unfortunately, becomes as bland as the nineteenth-century stew from the local settlement’s pub.
