Though they don't have nearly as many big-screen appearances as zombies or vampires, werewolves are still popular characters depicted in several films. It's not always the case, but most films with the hairy supernatural species show the werewolf characters as ordinary people turning into vicious killers. However, it's not a rule that werewolf stories must be told within the horror genre. Films like Teen Wolf have used lycanthropy to tell relatable coming-of-age stories through a comedic lens.

Stories of lycanthropy align with the 1980s cultural shift when conversations around sex and puberty were seeping into pop culture. Many of the '80s werewolf films deal with supernatural characters entering a new phase of life, with the physical transformation from human to wolf being representative of this change. Many of these transformations depicted in '80s werewolf films are presented as being painful, which happens to pair well with gory imagery typically associated with horror films.