“Werewolves” is just a simple lean and mean dystopian flick about a werewolf-as-zombie action thriller that borrows from some elements of pandemic and purge movies. It’s not a good movie but it’s a tight little time passer. Frank Grillo stars in it as (a ripped bruiser who is also…a molecular biologist!) and he always elevates any pulp movie he is in. He’s like an intellectual Charles Bronson. And that plot couldn’t be more straightforward: during a supermom people become giant werewolves by looking at the moon for even a second. Talk about giving you every reason to Netflix and chill!
What about the werewolves? Slightly cheesy in a good way. Meaning more of deliberately outdated or perhaps, excessively lavish in a much simple way. It’s hard to believe but many people today cannot help marveling at “practical” effects without feeling a little nostalgic, whereas not long ago these same effects seemed technologically cutting edge when compared to digital.
No genre demonstrates this better than werewolf movies. This was definitely the case for the 1941 film “The Wolfman” which paused during each transformation scene as if to say: “Forget this stupid story line! Watch this!” And what you would see is Lon Chaney Jr.’s face contorting with pain while hair kept sprouting on it all thanks to dissolves. Then in 1981, there was “The Howling,” which signaled dawn of visual-effects era those extending jaws and elongating limbs marked Rob Bottin’s first major impact as an innovative effects artist who eventually designed monsters for John Carpenter’s The Thing. Similarly, An American Werewolf in London made the practical effects look like they were trying to become digital ones when Naughton peered into his hand that was changing shape.
However, on looking at the title creatures of “Werewolves,” you may wonder “Are visual effects regressing?” These monsters are tall and very athletic-looking with devil ears and animatronic snouts that snap like little crocodile jaws. They also look like they’re made out of cardboard, with glued on costume hair as designed by Alex Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr. They move with incredible speed and rip through a lot of flesh. But from other perspectives, its apropos to watch how I would envision a wolf in a version of “Little Red Riding Hood” directed by the creators of “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey.”
CDC employee Dr. Wesley Marshall (Grillo) is involved in studying were wolfish for his employer as well as finding an antidote called ”moon screen” that can be spread on one’s body using spray bottles (yes!!). There are subjects who become lunar linked while staring at Earth’s satellite and understandably, everything goes horribly wrong. However, this whole scientific backdrop of panic in the lab ‘science’ fades away almost soon after it has been introduced.
This, in conclusion, is a story about Wesley who has to escape with his colleague Katrina Law after killing Werewolves thinking it’s a zombie movie. The question now remains; Who will be the next person to turn into werewolf, there are slats nailed over windows to prevent the monsters from coming in, and so on. One of the werewolves turns out to be Wesley’s neighbor, a survivalist blowhard who gets ready for supermom night by painting his face with red, white and blue warpainted that looks like what seems like first Jan. 6 werewolf (unless you count the Qanoon Shaman).
The film was directed by Steven C. Miller whose movies have garnered him a hardcore following as one of those super-niche indie movie cults because they appreciate his occasional action creativity mixed with absence of pretense. Nonetheless, Miller isn’t big on subtexts. This is one of those movies whose musical score is more bombastic than any other man at a synthesizer conjuring aural clouds of doom I’ve ever sat through. The best part of the movie though is at the end when Grillo himself has to look into the moon to save his loved ones. Lon Chaney Jr. must have had this movie in mind when he howled.”
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