D E C O Y F I L M S | S T O R Y R O O T S

STORY

A sleepy West Texas town is the backdrop for this story of a budding teenage girl's transformation into both a woman and a werewolf.

Christina Laskus is on the verge of her sixteenth birthday when the death of her grandmother brings her and her father, William, back to the town they left after her mother's mysterious disappearance thirteen years prior. Struggling to fit in, Christina has her first sexual encounter with a "carnie" known only as the Wolfman. He tells her a strange and deeply disturbing myth about the legendary creature.

Things take a nightmarish turn when Christina is attacked in the tall grasses by what everyone believes is a wolf. That same night, her father, the newly appointed County Sheriff, discovers the sinewy body of the Wolfman torn to shreds. When Christina begins to develop distinctly lupine characteristics and suffers from memory lapses, she is convicted she is becoming a werewolf. No one takes her seriously, chalking her changes up to teenage hormones.

Christina begins to doubt her own sanity until another victim is found brutally ravaged. Her father, more comfortable in the world of fact and science, continues to search for a plausible answer to the grisly murders. When his daughter's memories become irrefutable, arousing suspicions in the town, he is torn between his duty to serve and protect the community and his love for his child.

Part classic werewolf tale, part coming-of-age story, "PAW" explores a number of contemporary issues including sexual identity, conformity, separation from the environment and its natural laws and the confounding role of parenting and the inability to protect our children from an increasingly demanding and violent world.