'Skinwalker: The Howl of the Rougarou' Brings Little-Known Werewolf Legend to Life

Small Town Monsters’ latest production, Skinwalker: The Howl of the Rougarou, takes its viewers on a journey into the heart of Cajun Country in search of an infamous shapeshifter said to dwell among the cypress trees and Spanish moss of Louisiana’s highly-threatened coastal wetlands.

The film is beautifully shot, with eyewitness testimony often overlaying breathtaking footage of the swamps the beast is said to call home. Its cinematography is creepy and atmospheric, evoking a sense of possibility to accompany the witnesses’ reports; it’s one thing to hear the stories, but it’s another thing entirely to see where they take place and begin to entertain a reality beyond simple storytelling. This is reinforced by the film’s reenactments, which make good use of creature effects to describe the experiences of witnesses.

Like many Small Town Monsters productions, this documentary examines the folkloric origins of its subject, tracing the Rougarou back to indigenous tales of shapeshifters told by the Atakapa and Choctaw peoples and exploring how the immigration of the French and Irish into the area subsequently helped shape the narrative surrounding the beast. Perhaps most interesting is the influence those cultural legacies still hold over the legend, and how they’re represented even in modern stories of encounters with the monster.

Similarly to The Bray Road Beast, another documentary about lycanthropes by Small Town Monsters, there is a significant amount of supernatural phenomena mixed up in both the existing lore and modern experiences related by witnesses. Small Town Monsters’ objectivity in examining these stories and the phenomena potentially behind them is well-established, and nowhere is that more apparent than in their treatment of both the folklore and experiences of those affected by the Rougarou.

Skinwalker: The Howl of the Rougarou is about much more than just a monster, it’s about people struggling to survive in the face of climate change and the importance of traditional knowledge in maintaining their culture. The documentary doesn’t set out to prove the objective reality of the Rougarou, rather, its aim is to document the surviving folk traditions surrounding the monster and the experiences of those who claim to have encountered it, and it does that very, very well.

This documentary can be creepy and it’s easy to be frightened of the Rougarou, but in the tradition of all great horror stories, it’s also incredibly moving in the way it speaks to the human condition. The Rougarou may be a monster, but Skinwalker: The Howl of the Rougarou is all about humanity.

Skinwalker: The Howl of the Rougarou is now available on DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming. For more information, visit the Small Town Monsters website.

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