“Werewolves” is your basic everyday werewolf-zombie thriller, with elements taken from the pandemic and “Purge” films. It’s not a good movie, but it’s a good time. Frank Grillo, who is at the center of the film (he plays the tattered bruiser and is also… a molecular biologist!) has a way of making any pulp film better. He’s like a smart Charles Bronson. The plot is simplicity in itself, and efficiency too: on the night of a supermoon (that is, when the full moon approaches Earth), people all over the world are transformed into towering werewolves if they look at the moon for one minute. second. Talk about a good reason to stay home and stream something.
How are the werewolves? Cheesy in a fun way. As in self-consciously old-fashioned, or perhaps just lavishly shabby. Many people now view “practical” effects with a touch of dread and nostalgia, even though there was a time when the latest wave of practical effects technology actually seemed as advanced as digital. That’s because a lot of those influences were great impractical.
No genre reveals this more than the werewolf film. The 1941 film “The Wolfman” stopped in its tracks during every scene transition, as if to say, “Forget the stupid story! Behold.” this!” That’s Lon Chaney Jr.’s face contorting itself in pain as more and more layers of hair appear on it, thanks to the magic of dissolving. The 1981 film “The Howling” heralded a new era of visual effects — those extended jaws and elongated limbs marking the first Big splash for Rob Bottin, the next-level effects expert who went on to design the creatures for director John Carpenter’s “The Thing.” And in “An American Werewolf in London,” when David Naughton stares at his transformed hand, the practical effects, in that moment, required To be digital.
But when you watch “Werewolves,” you look at the creatures of the title and wonder, “Are the visual effects evolving now?” The monsters are tall and impressively athletic, with devilish ears and movable noses that snap like miniature crocodile jaws. These monsters move quickly and tear a large amount of flesh. But as designed by Alex Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr., it also looks like it’s made of papier-mache with glued-on wigs. From some angles, they look how I imagine the wolf would look in a version of Little Red Riding Hood that the Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey folks made.
Grllo’s Dr. Wesley Marshall works at the CDC, who studies the werewolf phenomenon and is trying to devise an antidote to it, a substance called “moonscreen” that you apply by spraying it (yes!). There are human guinea pigs on hand, who look at the moon and transform, and naturally the experiment fails. But the “scientific” background to the laboratory panic recedes as soon as it appears.
Wesley, the caretaker of his late brother’s wife (Ilfenesh Khedira) and daughter (Camden Gary), ends up on the run with a colleague (Katrina Law), as “Werewolves” takes on the obvious form of a zombie movie: Who will be the next to turn into a werewolf? Slats are installed on the windows to keep the monsters outetc. One of the werewolves is Wesley’s neighbor, a vaunted survivor who prepares for the night of the supermoon by painting his face with red, white, and blue paint. He then turns into something like the first werewolf on January 6 (unless you count the QAnon Shaman).
The film is directed by Stephen C. Miller, who has one of the very niche independent B-movie cult followings; They appreciate his choppy movement prowess combined with his lack of pretension. But Miller isn’t exactly big on subtext. “Werewolves” has one of the most bombastic riffs I’ve ever heard, evoking aural clouds of death. The best part of the movie is the ending, when Grillo himself has to look at the moon to save his loved ones. Lon Chaney Jr. would howl his approval.