Colin Minihan’s Coyotes

Usually, coyotes are reluctant to attack people, but it can happen. In this case, maybe they heard some Acme Corp. executives live in the tony Hollywood Hills neighborhood. Whatever their reasons might be, they are clearly quite ticked off. A geeky dad has no idea why the feral pack is prowling around his home, but he quickly starts to regret their doggy-door in Colin Minihan’s Coyotes, which opens this Friday in theaters.

Scott is a bit of a man-child, but the recent success in comics allowed him to move his family into the exclusive neighborhood. His wife Liv, is a cool mom, but obviously the grounded one in the family. Their daughter has reached the stage where she is conspicuously embarrassed by her parents and generally surly to be around. According to their disconcertingly intense exterminator, they are also living with rats in their walls. Unfortunately, that won’t be the worst of it.

Since this is LA, they could lose power at any moment, for no apparent cause, so it is hardly surprising when a freakish storm cuts the electric lines. Unfortunately, that tree Scott was supposed to prune crushes Liv’s car, nixing their mobility and making him look bad. Consequently, when the coyotes attack, their only ally will be their sleazy, unstable neighbor Trip and hi “visitor,” Julie. Frankly, Liv and Scott never really think of a good euphemism to obscure the reason Trip pays her to spend the night with him, which leads to many an awkward moment.

As you might hope (since they are married in real life), Kate Bosworth and Justin “Mac” Long have a good bickering-bantering chemistry as Liv and Scott. Of course, Long is convincingly nebbish, but Bosworth gets more laughs, while keeping the film realistically grounded, as the dryly acerbic Liv. In contrast, Norbert Leo Butz (a Tony winner for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) and Brittany Allen go big and loud as Trip and Julie, but they both have a knack for milking humor from their outrageous personas. Indeed, they are exactly the sort of weirdos you would expect to find in the Hollywood Hills, raised to the power of ten.

Admittedly, the CGI coyote effects are hit or miss, but, ironically, when you see the pups, you will probably start rooting for the coyotes. Regardless, Minihan (part of the Vicious Brothers filmmaking partnership responsible for the Grave Encounters franchise) nicely balances the comedy with the blood. Frankly, this is a more entertaining take on the animals-attack genre than recent examples like Beast or Daughter of the Wolf. It is amusingly sly, but refreshingly unpretentious. Recommended for horror fans, Coyotes opens tomorrow (10/3) at the AMC Empire.