By Terry Sherwood
Werewolves is complete action horror trash that one can enjoy by parking your brain at the door. The thrill of these films is they are not meant to be deep and get people that rarely watch genre films to view them. The film, directed by Matthew Kennedy, who is heavily influenced by Joe Dante’s brilliant film The Howling, is filled with guns, blasts, car chases, and death at while chanting a survivalist mantra.
The film’s story, which of course takes dramatic liberties with logic, is built around a catastrophic event triggered by a super moon, which transforms over a billion people into bloodthirsty werewolves. One year after this disastrous event decimates the world’s population, the super moon is returning, and humanity is racing against the clock to find a cure. These films thrive on being preposterous in scope ad people like living pulp novels. Action star Frank Grillo channelling his the pre–Botox Sylvester Stallone stars as Wesley Marshall, a military veteran leading the charge to save humanity while also striving to protect his family during the catastrophic night.
The story is simple and not meant to be surprising. It’s just a fun movie. The creatures themselves come straight out of The Howling, even to the point of some stalking sequences looking shot for shot similar. You get the victim being held, growled at, taunted by the beast’s breath from its roar exactly from that film. The transformation contains none of the awe and the genuine wow factor we have had as they are now CGI taking all the fun out of them.
Lots of action-packed driving, blowing up things in a downtown area, being trapped under vehicles as the intrepid Wesley and his partner Amy (Katrina Law) race to save Wesley’s widowed wife Lucy (Ilfenesh Hadera) and her cute child from the clutches of the beasties.
Werewolves is complete mindless fun, which is what is intended with most of the actors, including Lou Diamond Phillips, reciting ridiculous cliches with conviction. This is exactly what this you want and the film it does it well. Frank Grillo tries but gets mired in ‘Save my brother’s wife’ and the ‘tortured hero who never had time for a family as he was saving the world’ speeches”. This basic shoot-up, blow up, laugh at the gore entertainment which in the end is what folk want in this style.
Sure, the genre film had done militaristic horror better as in Dog Soldiers (2002), Starship troopers (1997), Eight-Legged Freaks (2002). The most distressing point for me is that the werewolves have become like the vampire, of being a simple killing machine. The reverse happens as film makers insist that each other, these creatures, is a romantic soul. Not every film is innovative, even if it claims to be. Pure fun. Pure popcorn is what this does, and that’s ok.
Werewolves is available on Digital Platforms 13 January and DVD 3 February an is distributed by Signature Entertainment.
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