Werewolf films tend to examine the animal embedded in the human psyche, the brutal past we claim to have left behind. With rare exceptions in literature and film, werewolves tend to men. Us dudes are supposedly closer to our primal emotions. We are beasts, and our deepest desire is to act accordingly. There are very few female werewolves, and when we do see them, they tend to be like the furry femme fatale Elisabeth Brooks in The Howling. Sexy, scary, and loving the sex and the killing after the sex.

When Animals Dream is a different kind of werewolf movie. It’s a film about the fear of women: the awakening of not just a woman’s sexuality but her self-worth and independence. And it’s also about the need for society to control that independence, more out of fear than anything else. It posits that apprehension is justified, if you don’t treat her right.

Sonia Suhl stars as Marie, seemingly the only young woman in a Danish fishing town, where she knows everyone and probably has since birth. She leads a mundane life. Along with a sweet, adoring father, she takes care of her mother, who is wheelchair bound and non-communicative due to an unknown illness. She works at the fishery, which is pretty much the only employer for any of the twenty-somethings that populate this desolate, windswept town. As she finishes her first day on the job, Marie is rather unpleasantly hazed by being pushed into a dumpster full of fish guts, but it’s par for the course for anyone who works there. If she is bursting to leave her humdrum life, she doesn’t show it.

While showering one morning, she notices that she has developed a lesion on her chest, which, over time begins to grow thick inch-long hair. The town doctor tells her not to worry about it, but she spies him in an intense, muted conversation with her father. The members of the town also seem to know something that Marie doesn’t. It’s not overt, but the curious stares she gets at her job are more than just out of curiosity. There’s a menace lurking beneath their eyes and a collective secret that Marie seems to be unaware of, as well as fear. As her “symptoms” progress and Marie grows more defiant, the menfolk become jittery and angry until everything comes to the well-predicted head.

The performances are first-rate all around. Suhl has a placid face and demeanor that belies the roiling emotions that are barreling up to the surface. Her confusion, anger, and the sense of betrayal she feels are all expressed without histrionics. And, well, no spoiler here really, she makes a ripping werewolf. Lars Mikkelsen, as her devoted father, radiates empathy and concern while concealing and actively participating in the patriarchy that could destroy Marie. Everyone else rises to their level.

Intelligent and effective, When Animals Dream is not a film for the gore-hound. The special effects are minimal, though impactful. The attacks are brutal and swift. This slow burn art-house horror flick cleverly subverts the gender expectations we usually see to explore the fear of the primal female and how a community oppresses it as a danger to society. It makes this point without preaching and even has a love story. Two actually. It’s a very successful werewolf movie, character study, and trenchant social critique.