Manic Pixie Were Girl

 I've owed Ms. Spenser a horror movie for a while, and I thought maybe Werewolves Within (2021) would qualify - even though it's a horror comedy.

After a prologue where someone probably gets killed, we meet our protagonist. Sam Richardson is a nerdy black forest ranger, on a new assignment to Beaverfield VT, which is about to get an oil pipeline running through. He gets a room at a lodge with a slightly vague proprietor - her husband ran off a little while ago, and she's a bit shell-shocked. He meets another civil-servant boarding there, Milana Vayntrub. She's the town's new mail deliverer, also a bit nerdy, but very friendly and cute. She offers to show him around town while she's making the rounds.

They meet a couple of low-lifes who run the garage - constantly quarreling potential meth-heads. Vayntrub makes sure he sticks around to see the drama. They meet the rabid right-wingers who big fans of the pipeline, and the gay couple who are opposed. Vayntrub also has him take the mail up to the hostile survivalist hunter. 

Back at the lodge, we have a PR man from the oil pipeline company, a hard-drinking, profane swaggering type. Along with the reclusive cryptobiologist who has set up a lab in the lodge. that's our cast of characters, and apparently, the entire population of the town.

That night, there's a blizzard that cuts the town off from the rest of the world. Also, a dog is killed, and the power goes out. All the generators have been destroyed, possibly by giant claws? The cryptobiologist has taken some hair samples, and found both human and wolf DNA. Could it be a ... Hard to say, because she is killed right away. Or was it suicide?

 Richardson pleads for calm and unity, frequently invoking Mr. Rogers. Still, the town's inhabitants scatter, and we catch them trying to kill each other - and often succeeding. Is there really a werewolf, or is it just the werewolves within?

SPOILER - really a werewolf. Vayntrub has been shyly attempting to seduce Richardson. In a quiet moment together with her, he shows interest in her behind because she has a paperback Walden in her back pocket. They dance to the jukebox of a closed tavern, but he gets a call from his (distant, withholding) girlfriend and spoils the moment. I won't tell you who the werewolf is, but I'll give you a hint. Vayntrub says something to the effect the werewolves are real; cute girls who read Thoreau and think being nerdy is sexy are a myth.

I thought this was a little heavy-handed, but pretty cute, especially Vayntrub's variation on the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Sadly, Ms. Spenser didn't like it at all. The stereotyped characters, the way they were at each other's throats, and the threat of the pipeline were all to much like real life. It was a little too scary, and that's without the werewolf.