A Louisiana Legend Unfolds in 'Skinwalker: Howl of the Rougarou'

Image courtesy of 1091 Pictures

In the bayous of Houma, Louisiana, a legend lingers among the residents and those who have seen it are warned against speaking of it. This is the legend of the Rougarou, a cryptid specific to the outlying bayous, wetlands, and marshes far from modern civilization. It takes the shape of what most would call a werewolf; a wolf-like creature in an anthropomorphic form that stands upright and emits a red glow from its eyes.

The origins of the Rougarou are traced in Seth Breedlove’s documentary Skinwalker: Howl of the Rougarou, with specific focus on the native Houma tribe’s telling of the creature’s origin. Breedlove makes a dedicated effort to amplify Houma tribe voices in featuring residents of the area who have their own gripping stories to tell of the monster.

The bayous that border Houma, LA is home to the elusive wolf-like creature, where it lives in isolation.

What is arguably the most interesting fact in the documentary is that there is no wolf population native to Houma nor its surrounding areas yet the legend of the Rougarou has been prevalent for centuries. It’s been passed down both by Houma tribe members and residents of the small town ancestrally connected to the French settlers arriving to the area, each with their own different attributes of the creature.

Breedlove invests in immortalizing a fading cultural folktale where other productions would merely build a spectacle of the paranormal creature, giving little regard to those speaking about it. He pays attention to not only the ethnic & cultural origins (as much as can be traced) of each story, but also its changing environment.

Some time is spent going over the decline of the area’s natural surroundings. The bayous and marshes are still intact but the resulting modern construction has already taken a toll on the landscape. This is a point of concern especially among the Houma tribe members who live in the same area as their ancestors, as they point out that the stories of the Rougarou are fading from the zeitgeist of future generations and becoming less prevalent, less important as a result of the burgeoning urban sprawl that is more becoming of their own habitat.

As there are multiple different legends that branch off depending on the source, so too do the species of the Rougarou and the forms they take. There are loads of splintering accounts of what a Rougarou could be when encountered, effectively taking on the characteristics of a shapeshifter rather than a traditional werewolf, although it seems to typically take this form.

Skinwalker: Howl of the Rugarou is filled to the brim with testimonials, perhaps too many. Yet the way the film’s subjects recount their stories is compelling, and the creature’s legend is so fascinatingly unique with its own subset of superstitions, rules, and lore that it almost overrides the documentary’s repetitive trappings.

However, repetition is exactly how these stories have been told: accounts of seeing the monster or of a friend encountering it, baked in the fear of not believing what they’re experiencing. The simplicity of the storytelling captivates those there to hear it. The Rougarou — real or not — represents a societal touchstone that may have passed its cultural zenith. Its distance from modern society is an unfortunate mapping of the environment’s peril, not to mention people’s drifting connection to ancestral folklore.

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Skinwalker: Howl of the Rougarou is available on VOD, Blu-ray & DVD from 1091 Pictures on Tuesday, September 14th. You can preorder the film digitally on iTunes or physical disc through the Small Town Monsters website.

[this article was originally published on september 10, 2021 on celluloidconsomme.medium.com.]