Filmed Locally - Werewolves Within

By Bradley Towle

CATSKILLS REGION — Werewolves Within is a 2021 horror comedy filmed in Phoenecia and Flieschmanns based on the video game of the same name. Production on the film began in the precarious February of 2020, a mere weeks before the Covid-19 shutdown began.

While the game is set in a medieval village, and the film is set in the fictional Beaverton, Vermont, filmmaker Josh Ruben knew he wanted to shoot the movie in the Catskills. The Woodstock native recounted to the Times Union in 2021 how much the eerie woods of his childhood continue to captivate his imagination. “I’m both traumatized by and constantly inspired by those woods,” said Ruben. “I was terrified of the woods here, I watched great movies here, I made great friends here, I played here and dreamt here and wrote here and read here. I love this area, and I knew I wanted to shoot in the Hudson Valley again,” he told SagIndie (Ruben’s previous film, Scare Me, was shot in Bearsville). He convinced the studio that there was an abundance of talented crew for the film in the area. With his fiancee’s suggestion of event venue Spillian in Flieschmanns as The Beaverfield Inn, they had a critical location for the film and production headquarters. “You want a place like the Beaverfield Inn to feel like a character the moment you walk in, and [Spillian] felt like a parlor in Clue, with the ballroom and the cafe and the labyrinthine hallways and dark corners. It felt perfect, and we knew we had to go.”

The film boasts an ensemble cast, including Sam Richardson, Milana Vayntrub, and Michaela Watkins, who portray inhabitants of a small town trapped in a snowstorm who begin to suspect one among them is a werewolf. An ongoing subplot surrounds a local discord over a proposed pipeline, adding to the small town’s tension and character. The film premiered in June 2021 at the Tribeca Film Festival and had a screening at The 32 Drive-In in Greenville on June 17th, 2021, ahead of its wider release on June 25th (a tenuous summer for movie theaters) and received generally positive reviews praising its playfulness. In August 2024, the Phoenicia Diner held a screening of the film as a part of the Lexington Film Fest. The diner offered “a themed werewolf dinner and drink offering” with cast and crew members, including actress Anni Krueger, Corey Spears, and Doria Tremente, in attendance. Werewolves Within is currently available across several streaming platforms.