Directed By Steven C. Miller

Starring – Frank Grillo, Katrina Law, Ilfenesh Hadera

The Plot – Two scientists (Grillo, Law) try to stop a mutation that turns people into werewolves after being touched by a super-moon the year before.

Rated R for violence, some gore, and adult language.

WEREWOLVES Official Trailer (2024) Frank Grillo

POSITIVES

If all that you seek out of low budget creature features are top notch practicality in suits and prosthetics, then look no further than ‘Werewolves’, which clearly has spent most of its budget attaining believability in the design of some pretty gruesome looking creatures. For a movie with so very little impressive about it, I’m blown away not only by the attention to detail of these snarling and sadistic antagonists, but also the way they move and attack so naturally when conflicted by human adversaries, which is all the more impressive when you consider Miller’s direction isn’t about maintaining the mystique of sporadic appearances, instead utilizing them to be a quite consistent part of the movie’s imagery, which gives us limitless opportunities to bask in the glow of something so timelessly appealing. Beyond the intricacies of the creature designs, the characters avoid the conventional molds of typical survive the night narratives, with the female characters garnering a rich combination of resiliency and intelligence, which make them just as deadly as Grillo’s Wesley. Despite the fact that the script doesn’t spend much time fleshing out their respective personalities and backstories, their ability to stand out with undeterred stoicism is a sign of the commitment that Law and Hadera bring to their respective roles, and even though neither of them is the primary protagonist to which this story primarily centers around, I always appreciate when a film diverts expectations with certain characters, especially those who would easily be considered damsels in distress, if this film were made in an earlier decade. Speaking of performances, Frank Grillo is once again tougher than a two dollar steak in performing his own stunts, but also gives an underlining merit of heart to Wesley that shows his tremendous range when conflicted by a variety of familial and well-being conflicts that overwhelm the character. Grillo has always been someone who I’ve adored as an action star, but it’s in those intimate moments when the camera is close that we experience the actor within the annihilator, granting us unfiltered access into the ways he continuously makes the roles he attempts his own, all the while certifying the charming bravado that we expect from someone who makes clumsy dialogue all the more natural with the nuance he gives to delivering them.

NEGATIVES

Unfortunately, ‘Werewolves’ can’t find a soul of its own inside of a script marred by familiarity, ironically to that of another Grillo movie; ‘The Purge’, which this plot reeks of, without ever attempting to divert the expectations of what one would expect from that precedent. This is a film where society prepares for the darkness that comes at night, and though that plot would be easy enough to evade comparisons from, or even make compelling by pushing the limitations of the structured gimmick within the film, certain measures of mercenary groups donning masks while killing completely obliterate the subtleties, and it soon becomes clear enough that Briarcliff Productions is banking on their audience never having seen any of these movies. ‘The Purge’ isn’t the only film that this movie borrows generously from, as one scene during the climax has distinct flashback feelings of ’30 Days of Night’, but out of spoilers I will refrain in articulating the overwhelming similarities between them that made me wonder why I wasn’t watching that superior movie, in the first place. If derivativeness isn’t enough, a hack and slash story certainly should be, as the movie begins feeling like a ‘Previously on the last episode of….’, as it forcefully glides over scenes of interesting backstory and development, before completely feeling like a first person shooter game, complete with hokey dialogue and inane logic of Lycanthropy that feels like the screenwriter rented out a cliff notes companion piece on the subject to appease his own carelessness. There’s such a rushed execution to the 88-minute run time that feels like pivotal scenes were omitted from this finished product, and as a result we have pivotal characters disappearing without further elaborating, a refinement on the rules of the transformation and anecdote that could’ve helped audiences understand more thoroughly towards following along, and what is easily one of the most abrupt resolutions and endings to a movie that I have seen in 2024. What follows is a free-flowing narrative that never even temporarily attained my curiosity, but even worse than that suspenseless direction from Miller, who somehow fumbles away the naturalized tension and urgency of these beastly creatures in contrast to the overwhelming vulnerability of their human prey. This can be felt the loudest during the movie’s many compromising action set pieces, which are so sensationalized in visual spectacle that they completely obscure any kind of detectability for the audience to interpret just what it is they’re seeing. Between poor camera placement feeling jarringly too close to be clearly coherent, machine-gun editing with the wandering eye of a child with A.D.D, and a complete blanketing of lens flare overkill that would make J.J Abrams moan in orgasmic joy, these instances were a chore to continuously sift through, with one sequence near the end even leaving me a bit dizzy as it became difficult to remain faithfully focused to anything that was transpiring on-screen. There are some occasionally cool kills with a use of practicality gore that did pay these ocular obstacles off accordingly, but they’re too few and far between due to what feels like budgetary limitations, and because of such, so many of the movie’s deaths happen either off-screen or slightly out of focus to where the capabilities of the audience persist, leaving a thirst for carnage candy that unfortunately doesn’t get filled for a horror hound like myself. Miller’s direction also makes the tragic decision to refuse embracing the campiness of cult consistencies tonally that I feel could’ve really afforded this film a freedom for expressionism, especially with a ludicrous plot for the movie involving so many unintentionally hilarious instances that practically write themselves to be spoofed. Too often during the film, I found myself laughing at these lines of dialogue like ‘Bite me’ that are so on the nose when trying to be badass, and between that and the human characters talking on the intercom to creatures who probably don’t understand English, it feels like we’re getting clues into a movie that ‘Werewolves’ rightfully should’ve been, as one that openly embraced the camp factor of its material that it lends itself to be. Finally, the structure of the film, between two sides of this family, feels a bit inconsistent in its appealing quality, with one much more entertaining than the other. The superior side of this pertains to Grillo’s character trying to survive the night with a fellow scientist, and the inferior one, even despite an aforementioned character who breaks the mold of conventional expectations, involves Grillo’s on-screen sister in law (Hadera) protecting her daughter against beastly intruders. The latter doesn’t advance the storytelling like the former, and considering the script spends so much time alongside this arc, it drags the film’s compelling factors down nearly every time it transitions between them, creating momentary speed bumps along the way to pacing that was quite smooth and seamless outside of it.

OVERALL
‘Werewolves’ lacks the puncturing bite that could reinvent the wheel of creature feature films of the current age, with a derivativeness to predecessors that it borrows evidently from. Despite unconventional directions taken with its characters, and convincing creature designs sparing no cent of the movie’s minimalized budget, the hunger of its horror goes mostly unsatisfied, leaving an unmemorable survive the night narrative without the resources or ambition to make it to sunrise.

My Grade: 4/10 or D