To call Alma and the Wolf one of the most ambitious horrors of the year would be putting it lightly. The Michael Patrick Jann-directed film transcends several genres to create a story that will have the audience talking about it for a long time after the credits roll. One actor who knows all about horror that gets everyone stirring is Li Jun Li, who appeared as Grace Chow in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and stars as Alma in this movie.
Li Jun Li was drawn to the mystique of Sinners and Alma and the Wolf
Despite Alma and the Wolf being released after Sinners, the offer for the Coogler project arrived on the last day that Li completed her scenes as Alma. “It was super top secret,” Li said. “Sinners was so secretive that it was an untitled Ryan Coogler movie, and I was given zero context. I was only given two pages to read. The only thing that appealed to me was the fact that it was a Ryan Coogler project, and that I was playing an Asian woman with a very, very, very thick southern accent, which was intriguing to me, because you don’t think about Asians speaking with a thick accent until I did further research for the movie.”
Li joked that horror seems to find her. “I’ve done The Exorcist, which I was actually terrified of when I would get scripts at 10pm and I would kick myself reading it that late,” she said with a laugh. “And then when Alma came around, I just thought, ‘Wow. What is it? What is it about my face that everyone wants me to be in a horror film?’ But then, of course, when the revelation happens, I was even more intrigued and more excited about it, because I do love psychological thrillers, and I do love that Alma is something that I had never played before. So, yeah, that’s what attracted me to Alma.”
The characters in Alma and the Wolf experience extreme transformations
Li’s co-star Ethan Embry, who plays Ren in the film, could also be considered a horror veteran, having starred in The Walking Dead, Creepshow, Vacancy, and the upcoming Scream 7. The role in Alma and the Wolf, though, might be one of the most intense performances of Embry’s career, as Ren undergoes a radical character arc transformation. So, how exactly does Embry find a balance for this type of performance, knowing what lies ahead changes the perception of the character the viewer first meets?
“Well, you try to go back to your original reading of it,” Embry said. “Because when you originally sit with a script and read it, that’s your first and last opportunity to see it as a viewer. So when reading scripts, it’s a muscle of mine that I’m very familiar with. When I sit and read them, I see everything. I see the world. I see my interpretations of characters. So you try to go back to that when you read the reveal, you enjoy it as the viewer, and then you put it aside because you don’t want that to color.”
Embry added that the speculative genre affords a bigger sandbox for character exploration. “In horror, psychological thrillers, sci-fi, you have multiple choices that you can make in your storytelling, in your performance. You’re not pigeonholed. You’re not stuck into one choice,” he said.
“We did this at Michael’s house nearly every night the day before shooting, because we go to him with, ‘Well, I can see this as X, Y and Z. Those are the choices that I could justify in my performance. Which one do you want?’ And then he would tell us why we’re gonna go with Y, and this is why he wants that choice. As a creative, it’s just really fun. It’s a workout, and I thoroughly enjoy making horror, not just for the physical tests that it puts you through, but also the response it gives the audience. You know how they say film is the highest form of art, because you have all of these different crafts and they’re all working together for one piece? I think horror, when done right, could be the highest form of film.”
Li’s character Alma also flips by the time the audience arrives at the end of Alma and the Wolf. “I think that Alma is a projection of Ren’s psyche,” Li said. “I think the wolf and the goat all serve a purpose in his fragmented state. The wolf is his rage that comes from his problem with alcohol. The goats represent the quiet observers in what he does. And I think Alma is the person he wishes he could be. The person who has a little bit of innocence to her. The person who has decided that after this event, she will make a change – she will give up drinking. I think he projected this onto a woman, because she’s more of an easier person for him to open up to, and I think that she is just a reflection of who he wishes to be.”
Ethan Embry and Li Jun Li revealed their greatest fears
So, if horror is meant to be a reflection of our greatest fears, what are Ethan Embry and Li Jun Li’s biggest ones? “Spiders,” Embry said. “That’s why Arachnophobia is the greatest movie ever made.”
“Deep water,” Li stated. “I love the beach and standing in the ocean, but deep sea is terrifying to me, and there’s plenty of problems out there.” Embry joked that Li needed to watch The Abyss before going to bed, to which she responded, “No, that’s okay.”
Read our full review of Alma and the Wolf and watch the full interview below.
