| Director | Michael Wadleigh |
|---|---|
| Budget | $17 million |
| Box office | $10.6 million |
Former NYPD Captain Dewey Wilson is brought back to the force and assigned to solve a bizarre string of violent murders after high-profile magnate Christopher Van der Veer, his wife Pauline, and his bodyguard are slain in Battery Park. Executive Security, the private firm employed by Van der Veer, blames the murders on a group of left-wing anarchists, but knowing that Van der Veer's bodyguard was a Haitian with voodoo-ties leads Wilson to doubt this theory because the bodyguard was torn apart with ruthless efficiency (the anarchists are mostly activist bomb-makers, not violent assassins). With pressure to solve the case coming from both the Police Commissioner and the Mayor, Wilson is partnered with criminal psychologist Rebecca Neff.
Elsewhere, in the South Bronx, a homeless man explores an abandoned church that is scheduled to be demolished by Van der Veer's development company. He is killed by an unseen monstrous being. Wilson and Neff investigate his murder. At the church, the apparent sounds of a baby crying lure Neff up to the bell tower. Wilson follows her, but does not hear the crying; once Neff is separated from him, then he hears a wolf's howl. He goes up after Neff and drags her to safety. Later that night, a bridge-worker is apparently murdered by the same creature.
Coroner Whittington discovers non-human hairs on several victims and consults a zoologist named Dr. Carl Ferguson, who identifies the hairs as belonging to an unknown subspecies of Canis lupus (wolf). Ferguson compares wolves to Native Americans in how they were both hunted to near extinction by colonizing imports. Inspired, Wilson finds Eddie Holt, a militant Native activist that he arrested some years previously, working in construction. While Wilson interrogates Holt on top of the Manhattan Bridge, Holt claims to be a shape-shifter, which implicates him as the killer. Wilson opts to leave Holt alone and tail him that night.
Following animal clues, Ferguson goes to Central Park, where a creature ambushes and kills him in a tunnel. Wilson spends the remainder of his night with Rebecca Neff and they have sex. The following morning, a man in a jogging suit rides Ferguson's motorcycle past Wilson as he leaves Neff's apartment.
Whittington and Wilson stake out the church, armed with sniper-rifles and sound-equipment; after Whittington almost blows his ears out by opening a beer can near a parabolic microphone, then comes an animal that appears to be a wolf and kills him. Meanwhile, Executive Security apprehends a terrorist-cell of the "Götterdämmerung", which is in connection with the slaying of Christopher Van der Veer.
A traumatized Wilson escapes the church and finds himself at the nearby Wigwam Bar, where Holt and his friends are drinking. The group of Natives reveals the true nature of the killer as "Wolfen", the wolf-spirit. They explain that the Wolfen have extraordinary abilities and "might be gods". Holt tells Wilson that he cannot fight the Wolfen, stating: "You don't have the eyes of the hunter, you have the eyes of the dead". The leader of the group, the Old Indian, informs Wilson that the Wolfen kill to protect their hunting-ground and target "the elderly, the sick--those who will not be missed".
It is also inferred by the killing of Ferguson and Whittington, both of whom were neither sick nor elderly, that Wolfen are also very secretive and will not stand for their existence to be exposed to the world. Getting too close as Ferguson and Whittington did and then the Wolfen shall take action. Wilson resolves to end his involvement in the case of Van der Veer, but he, Rebecca Neff, and Wilson's superior, Captain Warren, are cornered on Wall Street by the Wolfen-pack. Warren is advised to stay perfectly still, but he ignores their warnings and tries to escape the Wolfen; yet he fails to get away and is decapitated. Meanwhile, Wilson and Neff flee into a nearby building.
Wilson and Neff are shortly thereafter cornered in Van der Veer's penthouse by the pack, led by its white alpha male. Wilson smashes the model of the constructing project that threatened their hunting-ground, trying to communicate that the threat no longer exists and that he and Rebecca Neff are not enemies. The Wolfen vanish just as the police barge in. Wilson claims the attack was made by terrorists. In a voice-over, Wilson explains that Wolfen will continue preying on weak and isolated members of the human herd as humans do to each other through class-related conflict. Wolfen will continue being invisible to humanity because of their nature; not that of spirits but predators, who are higher on the food-chain than humans. The last scene is Eddie and his friends looking at the city from the bridge.