ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: First look at horror-thriller ‘The Wolf of Snow Hollow’

Writer-director Jim Cummings plays a small town cop investigating a homicide case in horror-thriller-black-comedy The Wolf of Snow Hollow. "The movie is about this recovering alcoholic who is the son of the sheriff at a sheriff’s department in Utah," says Cummings, who previously wrote, directed, and starred in 2018's Thunder Road. "He is just a complete bulldozer and asshole and doesn’t listen to the people around him. That's how we introduce the guy. He's at AA and he sounds like a murderer. He talks about driving a forklift through his ex-wife’s house. He starts to believe that there is a serial killer in town and everybody else starts to believe that there’s a werewolf. He has to convince everybody in his circle that there’s no such thing as werewolves, which is something that he thinks should have gone without saying. And it becomes progressively more intense."

Riki Lindhome from Gilmore Girls and comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates plays the rather more level-headed police partner of Cummings' character. "I've only seen her play sort of cosmopolitan characters," says the filmmaker. "But in talking to her she was like, 'I grew up on a farm, I could totally play this tomboy cowgirl.' She was so wonderful. It was like 15 degrees out sometimes, we were in the middle of a blizzard in Utah shooting, it was like Apocalypse Now, and she was so kind and caring."

The Wolf of Snow Hollow also features one of the last performances from the late Robert Forster (Jackie Brown, Twin Peaks: The Return), who plays Cummings's father.

"Robert was like the last cowboy, it kind of felt like on set," says Cummings. "He was great, man. He was just so authentic. He saw my first movie and was like, 'This kid is great, I’m going to work with this dude.' He just kept on championing me.

The Wolf of Snow Hollow costars Jimmy Tatro and Chloe East and is released in theaters and on demand Oct. 9.