Werewolves ~ Reveiw

When I first saw the trailer for Werewolves, I nearly leaped out of my seat and cheered. For too long, genre movies and TV shows have been failing on the promise of their premises, spending entire seasons worth of television to finally reach the point a normal pilot would have hit in 45 minutes. Or whole two-and-a-half-hour-long movies designed to set up a sequel. Here was a movie, I thought, that was a throwback to the John Carpenter classics of the 80’s…a movie that cut through all the narrative deadweight to deliver a story that’s all killer no filler. I wasn’t wrong, exactly, but…well…be careful what you wish for.

 Werewolves starts with the following deliriously, gloriously stupid crawl “One year ago, a supermoon turned millions into werewolves. Tonight is another supermoon…” This text is intercut with scientist Dr. Aranda (Lou Diamond Phillips) explaining what a supermoon is and warning the citizens of the United States to stay indoors so that they don’t turn into a werewolf. The basic gist is that last year a supermoon event turned everyone who was touched by moonlight into a werewolf. Honestly, don’t think too hard about this setup, because this is not that type of movie, and in fact, you’ll be doing a film a disservice if you think about it too much.   

Wesley Marshall (Frank Grillo) is a biologist and former military man. His brother died during the werewolf event last year, and now he’s working hard to keep Lucy (Ilfenesh Hadera) and niece Emma (Kamdyn Gary) safe. Wesley is part of a team of scientists working during the new supermoon to cure the lycanthropy sweeping the world. If you guessed the cure doesn’t work and everyone turns into werewolves anyway – you win a cookie. Now, Wesley and fellow scientist Amy (Katrina Law) are in a desperate fight for survival as they make their way through the werewolf infested town back to Wesley’s family.

I want to be clear on several points before I start criticising Werewolves. This is an exceptionally well-made film. Its gore and creature effects by monster movie legends Alec Willis and Tom Woodruff Jr. are top-notch. The cast is all in with the ridiculous on-the-nose B-movie dialogue. Director Steven C. Miller stages most of the action scenes with clarity and verve. Overall, the film is just gleefully dumb in the best way – like if Roland Emmerich made a werewolf movie. 

My problems with the film stem from Matthew Kennedy’s script. When your story is “all killer no filler,” you have to make sure there’s something for your audience to grab onto. Such as an intriguing character like Snake Plissken in Escape From New York. Or unique world-building like the New York of The Warriors. Or the sly sense of humor in Paul Verhoeven’s work. Unfortunately, Werewolves falls into a repetitive rhythm. Characters run somewhere, werewolves show up, and they fight to survive, rinse repeat. Look, I’m not made of stone, the sight of Frank Grillo screaming “bite me!” and firing a minigun at lycanthropes warms my heart, but that doesn’t help the movie feeling sort of, well, boring. 

It makes me sad to say that, because this is an indie film – they don’t have the budget like a Marvel movie to go crazy with special effects and furthermore, original movies like this are rarely released in theaters these days! So, I wanted to love Werewolves, instead, I just liked it, which bums me out all around.

Two stars out of Four