Brittany Allen, Colin Minihan, Coyotes, Fantastic Fest, film festivals, horror, Justin Long, Kate Bosworth, Katherine McNamara, Keir O'Donnell, Kevin Glynn, Los Angeles, Mila Harris, movies, Norbert Leo Butz, Norma Nivia, reviews
October 13, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Colin Minihan
Culture Representation: Taking place in Los Angeles, the horror film “Coyotes” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: Several people encounter deadly coyotes that are running loose in the city.
Culture Audience: “Coyotes” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and “creature feature” movies that are tacky, mindless and boring.
“Coyotes” is a deliberately campy horror comedy movie about killer coyotes on the loose in Los Angeles. However, this sloppily made flop fails to be amusing, scary or interesting, with repetitive scenes of people making incredibly idiotic decisions. And even though “Coyotes” is only 91 minutes long, it feels like longer because this garbage movie is so dull.
Directed by Colin Minihan, “Coyotes” was written by Tad Daggerhart and Nick Simon. The movie had its world premiere at the 2025 edition of Fantastic Fest. “Coyotes” takes place in Los Angeles but was actually filmed in Colombia. In reality, coyotes usually don’t attack humans unless they feel threatened, but since this is a fictional horror movie about killer coyotes, that fact can be overlooked. The movie throws in a not-very-believable “reveal” toward the end to explain why these particular coyotes have been targeting people.
“Coyotes” begins by showing a vain and vapid social media influencer named Kat (played by Katherine McNamara), who is walking her pet Chihuahua named Gigi on a seemingly deserted Los Angeles street. Kat has just come from a nightclub or a party and is yapping on her phone with a friend about how irrisistible Kat thinks she is. “I swear, it’s not intentional, but people just follow my vibe,” Kat says in a phony humble brag. “I’m just magnetic.”
It starts raining when Kat decides to take selfie photos on the street. Gigi goes into some bushes when Kat feels strong tugging on the dog’s leash. She also hears strange rustling in the bushes and the sound of Gigi crying out in pain. Kat doesn’t notice that a coyote is in the background in one of her selfie photos.
You can easily predict the rest: Kat goes into the bushes and sees that Gigi was killed by a coyote. A coyote leaps out and mauls Kat, who stumbles into the street and gets hit by a car. (The driver barely stops before driving away.) Two coyotes then come out of the bushes and look at Kat’s mangled body like fresh prey.
This scene (which is partially shown in the “Coyotes” trailer) is very cliché. However, it’s actually one of the better scenes in the movie because McNamara plays the role with good comedic timing. Unfortunately, she’s in the movie for less than 10 minutes. After Kat dies, the movie has a montage of clips explaining that recent wildfires in the area have driven coyotes closer to highly populated areas of the city.
The rest of “Coyotes” (which has small number of people in its cast) is about other people who encounter the coyotes in the Hollywood Hills area of Los Angeles. The three-person family at the center of this deadly coyote story consists of workaholic writer Scott (played by Justin Long); his homemaker wife Liv (played by Kate Bosworth); and their moody daughter Chloe (played by Mila Harris), who’s about 15 or 16 years old. When Scott first sees the coyotes, even after hearing that they kill people, he acts like they’re just friendly stray dogs. Scott changes his mind when he sees how vicious these coyotes can be.
Other characters in the movie are completely hollow and written as empty-headed shells. Devon (played by Keir O’Donnell) is a fanatical exterminator who was hired by Scott to get rid of a rat infestation in the family home the day before the coyotes show up near the home and go on a rampage. Trip (played by Norbert Leo Butz) is the cocaine-snorting slob who lives next door to the family. Julie (played by Brittany Allen) is a sex worker hired by Trip to spend the night at his place. Tony (played by Kevin Glynn) is Scott’s goofy Irish friend. Sheila (played by Norma Nivia) is a famous actress who is Tony’s nagging wife.
News reports mention that Kat was one of a growing number of people in the area who’ve been recently killed by coyotes. Because coyotes tend to hunt at night, you would think there would be a temporary curfew in the city. You would think that fire department officials (which usually handle wild animal control issues) would be making efforts to find and capture these homicidal coyotes. But no, not in this stupid movie.
On the night before the big rampage, a severe rainstorm hits the area and causes a power outage and several trees to fall down. The day after the storm, Tony comes over to Scott’s house to help Scott remove fallen trees from the family’s front yard. Meanwhile, Trip is distraught because his cat Lucy has gone missing. (Liv found Lucy’s collar, which is not a good indication that Lucy is still alive.)
“Coyotes” has too many plot holes and annoyingly moronic actions to make this an enjoyable movie to watch. The terror scenes are dragged out by making not-believable-at all excuses that certain characters in the movie just happen to have cell phones with dead batteries at the same time. These batteries can’t be recharged because of the power outage. (Apparently, no one in this movie has battery chargers that don’t need electricity.)
Certain people get severely mauled and bitten by coyotes, but their injuries suddenly disappear in later scenes that take place on the same night. (That’s how you know who will be the survivors by the end of the movie.) There are no science-fiction elements in “Coyotes,” so there’s no excuse for these quickly disappearing wounds.
When a family member needs immediately medical care, no effort is made to get medical help for that person. When a phone call for help is finally made, the person making the call decides to contact Devon the exterminator, not emergency services. The same family member who gets a serious wound from a coyote bite worries aloud that the wound will leave a scar, like a “vampire bite.” A family member makes this garbage comment in response: “That’d be cool.”
The movie is also annoying for how it makes Scott a walking contradiction. In the beginning of the movie, he’s so compassionate and concerned about animals, he asks exterminator Devon if there’s a way to trap the house-invading rats and let the rats loose in the wild instead of killing the rats. And yet, later in the movie, Scott shows that he’s not really thinking about getting himself and his family members to safety when they’re in peril. Liv isn’t much better and is also a horribly irresponsible parent, but she’s more likely to take effective action, compared to foolish and incompetent Scott.
The visual effects are what you might expect for a low-budget trashy flick, but it still takes you out of the movie to see the obviously fake coyotes, which look and act more like wolves in the movie. In one absolutely ridiculous scene, a fully grown adult coyote sneaks into the family’s house by going through a dog door that’s small enough to only fit the family’s Yorkshire Terrier named Charlie. The filmmakers of “Coyotes” obviously don’t care about insulting viewers’ intelligence.
Certain people in the story have access to loaded guns, but the movie is mostly pathetic in how it depicts gun action. “Coyotes” tries to be a bit “artsy,” by having occasional freeze frames that look like comic book panels. This visual style looks somewhat random until it’s explained in one of the very last scenes in the movie that Scott is a longtime comic book collector.
The acting in “Coyotes” is nothing special and is mediocre at best. The dialogue is mostly awful or forgettable. Allen has the most entertaining character in the movie and does sufficiently well in the role, but the rest of the characters are just lackluster stereotypes. Long and Bosworth (who are a married couple in real life) have played these types of characters (dorky neurotic for Long, strong-willed love interest for Bosworth) many times before, so there’s nothing new to see here.
“Coyotes” is the type of terribly made “killer animals on the loose” film where even after someone knows that these animals are on a rampage and are close by, that person leaves a front door of the house open, and a killer animal goes into the house. Yes, that really happens in “Coyotes.” And the person who left the door open gets exactly what’s coming. Viewers who’ve been warned about “Coyotes” being time-wasting junk will also get exactly what they deserve if they still want to watch this irritating and monotonous dreck.
Aura Entertainment released “Coyotes” in select U.S. cinemas on October 3, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on October 21, 2025.