My first exposure to the indie DIY guy Jim Cummings (he writes, directs, produces and acts) was this film from 2020. In the current mode of genre-mixing, it combines horror, dark comedy, and domestic melodrama, and does a pretty fair job of it. In a small snowy town (that I assumed was in Colorado but the film was shot in Utah), Cummings is a single dad, recovering alcoholic, and police officer whose ailing father (character actor legend Robert Forster) is still the town sheriff. There appears to be a particularly savage serial killer loose and the locals eventually assume the deaths are caused by a werewolf. Cummings isn't sure, and with help (and hinderance) from his dad, a female detective (Riki Lindhome), and other cops, Cummings eventually figures things out, though not before falling off the wagon and getting close to a breakdown.
Cummings is both quite handsome and surprisingly good in what winds up being a complex role. His character is (generally) competent, intense, and sensitive, and though there are some quirky walls put up, likeable. Forster died of brain cancer not long after this movie was shot, but if he was sickly, you'd never know it from his performance, which is strong as usual. The snow, all of it real, I assume, adds so much to the atmosphere. Highly recommended.
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