WEREWOLVES -- Beastly Horror Thriller Captures Energy of Bygone Era

Review by Daniel Lima

Anyone used to exploring the depths of the low budget genre movies of yesteryear will be familiar with a particular kind of disappointment. You come across a film with an exciting title, a promising premise, and a cool poster: Dracula’s Dog, The Drifting Avenger, most giallo. Then you watch it and find that it’s mostly people standing around and talking to each other, with a handful of moments sprinkled about that capture that imagined greatness. Werewolves hearkens back to that ignoble tradition, but in the days of bloated, sanitized, impersonal studio IP movies, its shaggy contours become charming in their own right.

“One year ago a supermoon turned millions into werewolves.” This ludicrous line opens the film, immediately setting the stakes and the tone. With a new supermoon about to rise, a crack team of CDC scientists seeks to test a way to prevent these transformations. Frank Grillo barricades the home of his brother’s wife and daughter before leaving to head the operation, as the world’s least convincing virologist. Naturally, things go awry, and both Grillo and his family must fight to survive the night.

The ironically self-aware genre throwback has been a plague on modern cinema, and thankfully Werewolves avoids that trap by committing wholeheartedly to the silliness of its premise without ever tipping over into parody. Though many elements are fantastic and absurd — the gung ho neighbor, the repeated use of the word “moonscreen”, the monsters themselves, Frank Grillo playing a scientist — they are treated with the frankness and gravity they should demand within the context of this reality. Beyond providing the audience a level of buy-in that makes what happens feel like it matters, this straight-faced treatment of the material makes it even seem even goofier; I know I laughed every time someone said “moonscreen”, or a character did something that strained credulity, or an entire conversation did nothing but reiterate the obvious.

That’s helpful, because one thing this movie has plenty of is filler. Even at barely over ninety minutes, Werewolves strains to engineer enough narrative momentum to propel it to the credits. There is barely any character work to speak of, with the action divided between Grillo’s homeward quest with his forgettable companion, and his forgettable sister-in-law alone at home with a forgettable child. The number of times the gruff man of action stops to just say, “We have to keep moving”, is truly baffling. As funny as it is at first, when it dawns on you that this will be most of the movie it becomes a tad less amusing.

The most confounding choice, however, is how the film looks. This would largely be in keeping with most modern low budget genre thrillers, if it werent’t for the lighting. Throughout the first set piece, when the titular creatures first rear their heads in a government facility, the lights are flashing so rapidly it creates a migraine-inducing strobe effect. Never before have my eyes been so physically discomforted by a movie; epileptics, stay away. More annoying is the amount of artificial lens flare, often overwhelming the screen to the point that it’s hard to make out what is happening. I can only imagine these choices were made to help obscure how cheap the actual werewolf costumes actually are, but it instead just makes the film an ugly mess.

It also obscures what is far and away the best part of the movie. Yes, these are practical werewolves. Yes, they are stiff, only vaguely dog-like,, and look like hair stuck to rubber or latex. Yes, they are awesome. For some reason filmmakers and audiences have decided that a fake, rubbery CGI creation that does not exist is somehow easier to believe in than a fake, rubbery piece of fake rubber that does. The latter, since it actually exists in physical space, allows for more interesting ways to shoot the monsters: they can share the frame with the heroes without breaking the illusion, interact with the environment to make them seem more of a threat, a scene can be staged without have to guess how it will look after post. As obviously artificial as they are, the magic of cinema quickly asserts itself, and you accept that these are dangerous, bloodthirsty predators.

Are they utilized to maximum effect? Not quite. Again, the visual language of the film does undermine their appearances, along with some rapid editing to further make things unintelligible. Too often do the wolves appear only for nothing to actually happen, and as the finale draws near it does seem like they are rather easy to outsmart and outfight. That said, this movie is at its best when they are front and center, and towards they end it finally delivers on the high-octane lycanthropic thrills that one would hope for.

Ultimately, Werewolves does fail to be a proper spiritual successor to the excellent Dog Soldiers, but in doing so hits on a particular niche appeal that is increasingly rare. It’s messy, it’s dumb, it’s occasionally boring, but when it works it works. If this movie had come out forty years ago, it might have looked and felt largely the same, spoken about today as a hidden gem of an era that looks even better in hindsight. Hopefully, the decades to come will see this in that same light. 

Werewolves is now in theaters.

Rating: 3.5/5