I’m a werewolf! You’re a werewolf! Deep down inside, we’re all werewolves! All it takes is a supermoon to bring out the beast in us.
That’s the basic premise of Werewolves, which plays more like an entry in the Purge franchise than your usual lycan horror film. And that’s just fine because it seems like we’ve been getting quite a few werewolf movies lately, and none managed to make them scary again. Neither does this one, but at least there’s an attempt to think outside the box.
It even features Purge alumnus Frank Grillo as Wesley Marshall, part of a CDC team trying to find a lycanthropy cure after last year’s supermoon turned a billion people into bloodthirsty beasties. The movie opens with Wesley fortifying the home of widowed sister-in-law Lucy (Ilfenesh Hadera) and his niece, arming it with a variety of deadly booby traps before heading off test an experimental spray called ‘moonscreen,’ which is supposed to protect people exposed to the moon’s effects.
Meanwhile, the public is urged to stay in their homes all night as a new supermoon approaches. Naturally, not everybody listens. Naturally, things go catastrophically awry at Wesley’s facility when their test subjects kill nearly all his colleagues and escape. Naturally, he and fellow doctor Amy Chen (Katrina Law) must make their way on-foot through a city crawling with critters in order to save his extended family. The good news is they’re protected by moonscreen. The bad news is that it’s only effective for an hour, so there’s no time to fart around.
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| "Hey...Dunkin' Donuts. I could sure go for a maple bar right now." |
Despite a dead serious tone, Werewolves is a pretty silly film with plenty of lapses in plausibility, goofy dialogue and ludicrous plot turns that often depend on the stupidity of its characters. Steven C, Miller’s direction is perfunctory at best, not helped by occasionally atrocious editing and an obnoxious amount of lens flares. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it. There’s an emphasis on bloody action over pure horror, and as such, it delivers. I suppose it goes without saying that Grillo is more convincing as a werewolf asskicker than a viral expert. And for a guy pushing 60, he’s absolutely ripped, which the filmmakers exploit at every opportunity. Still, he’s entertaining in a role that essentially requires him to channel Leo Barnes from The Purge: Anarchy.
Werewolves is junk, but if you’re in the right frame of mind, it’s amusing junk built on a wild premise. Like most werewolf movies, it isn’t remotely scary (and seldom tries to be), but the action, violence and transformation effects are well done. With tempered expectations, you might have a good time.
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