Werewolves

A “scientist” and his family find themselves in the fight for their lives when a supermoon turns their friends and neighbors into bloodthirsty werewolves.

The movie begins with a little bit of context:

One year ago a supermoon triggered a global event…

That global event was that a whole bunch of people all across the world suddenly turned into werewolves for one night, and there was a lot of blood and carnage as a result. Our story starts in the aftermath, as in the time since that night, the world has been feverishly preparing for the next supermoon, afraid it will cause another outbreak of lycanthropy.

And now, this very night, it's finally about to be a supermoon again...

There have long been claims that supermoons can cause natural disasters, like floods and earthquakes or even madness, driving people to commit violence. These stories are the root of the words “lunacy” and “lunatic.” Derived from the Roman goddess of the moon, Luna, who would drive her silver chariot across the dark sky each night, she was said to keep company with wolves, and that her worshippers were violent and crazy.

The term "supermoon" was first coined by astrologer Richard Nolle in 1979. It refers to either a new Moon, or a full Moon, that occurs when the Moon is nearly at its perigee, which is the closest the Moon’s orbit brings it to Earth. This results in the Moon appearing larger-than-usual and much brighter in the sky. 

A Super Blood Moon is a rare astronomical that occurs when both a supermoon and a total lunar eclipse happens, which results in a larger, brighter, and reddish-colored Moon. This event in particular traditionally causes the most superstitious panic, even as recently as the last ten years where crazy white Christian American asshole grifters pulled the "Blood Moon Prophecies" out of their ass, linking them to the usual Evangelical nonsense about the End Times, which they then turned into a best selling boook, which was of course snatched off the shelves by the idiot mouth-breathers, rubes, marks, and lunatics that generally make up the bulk of their zealotic adherrants.

The idea of werewolves has been around for a long time too, appearing in all cultures all around the world.

Now known as lycanthropy, the curse is derived from the Greek root word of lykanthropos, literally "wolf-man," it comes from the story in Greek mythology of Lycaon, king of Arcadia. There’s many versions of this story, but in a common one, Lycaon had 50 sons–and lets just take a moment here to pour one out for his wife, Cyllene, the very definition of "long suffering" who was probably exhausted by the end of that whole effort. Besides being a randy fucker, Lycaon was also apparently a covetous asshole, blinded by his jealousy of others and his insatiable demand for entitlement. This drove him to decide that it was his job to “prove” that Zeus–the king of the Pantheon of Greek Gods, as well as the wielder of the Thunderbolt–wasn’t actually all that great and powerful after all.

Why would Lycaon decide that he was the one that needed to prove this, and why he would even care in the first place? Well, I think we can all agree, if there's one thing humanity has never seemed to have any shortage of, it's angry contrarian assholes who think they deserve to be first simply because they exist. Go stand in line at a really busy fast food restaurant, or in a retail store, and you’ll get to see a dozen of these fucking guys without even trying.

Anyway, to prove that Zeus wasn’t really all that after all, Lycaon killed and then cooked his presumably least favorite son out of the 50, Nyctimus, then he invited Zeus over for dinner, and served him Nyctimus fillets, believing that if Zeus didn’t recognize that he was eating human flesh, that would mean that Zeus wasn’t as all-knowing as he claimed, thus proving Lycaon right. Why Lycaon settled on this particular test for the determining of godliness, who knows. On top of that, what exactly Lycoan thought would happen next, should he be proven right, if he was able to trick Zeus, and after he then triumphantly revealed the truth to the King of the Gods, someone who traditionally is very well know to be a capricious and petty mother fucker, I don’t know. But whatever his plans may have been, it's moot, as unfortunately for Lycaon, Zeus was exactly as advertised. Disgusted and angry at Lycaon’s impiety, his cruelty to his own children, as well as his casual and selfish brutality, and also... gross... Zeus punished Lycoan in his usual preferred way, by transforming him into an animal, specifically in this case... a wolf. And while, as far as punishments go, I don't really get the reasoning, the idea of lycanthropy was born here, at least, in Western culture, of course.

Lycanthropy is when an individual shapeshifts into a wolf, or a hybrid wolf–human like creature, either on purpose, or due to a curse or an infection, or a bite or scratch from another werewolf, with their transformation then often occurring on the night of a full moon.

The story of Lycaon is also the root reason for why being a werewolf was long considered the result of some kind of divine punishment, meaning that anyone so afflicted was inherently bad in some way. So, much like with witch trials, anyone who was accused of being a werewolf, because they were weird, or had some kind of metal illness the people of the time didn't understand, or maybe they just had curved fingernails, or low-set ears, or a long-armed or loping stride, or even just a uni-brow, their eventual execution was then rationalized, like pretty much every atrocity throughout history, as simply being God’s will.

So, back to the film... could a “supermoon” then really be something that could “supercharge” werewolves? Sure. why not? It’s all made up anyway, and besides, the world’s ending, so fuck it, let’s go!

Werewolves is a movie about a werewolf outbreak.

So...

In the movie, our hero is the always great Frank Grillo appearing as Dr. Wesley Marshall, a kind of modern day Doc Savage trapped in a literal dog eat dog world. Dr. Marshall is a man with a PhD in molecular biology, as well as a former special forces officer.

Thank God for the G.I. Bill, I guess.

Dr. Marshall lives somewhere in Florida, America's pustulant hemmorhoid, with his sister-in-law, Lucy, and her supernatually precocious daughter, Emma, who is the apple of Dr. Marshall's eye. They all live together now, because they all lost loved ones in last year's unexpected lycanthropic debacle.

When we first meet Dr. Marshall, he's fortifying their house against werewolves with plywood and wrought iron grates. He also has an idiot asshole white guy gun-nut of a neighbor, all painted up and strapped into yuppie tactical gear, ready for the coming night, armed to the teeth with a bunch of guns he doesn't know how to use safely, and giddy with his painfully erect little murder-boner at the thought that he might get to kill something, so y'know... a pretty typical white guy in the suburbs of America.

Obviously he is going to be trouble later in the movie.

As the family stocks up, Dr. Marshall considers not going into work, because it would leave Lucy and Emma unprotected, despite their precautions, but Lucy convinces him to head back to the laboratory. Y'see, Dr. Marshall's work is very important. He is involved in a scientific study–whose funding in the real world would've probably been cut off by now–that is attempting to figure out why the supermoon is turning people into werewolves, and also how to prevent it from happening again.

Their theory: Slather a bunch of test subjects with an experimental "Moonscreen" which is like sunscreen, but... for the moon... and then they will mass expose the gathered be-slathered to the light of the supermoon.

It's fair to say that their first test is a failure.

Everybody turns into werewolves.

Trapped in their testing facility, Dr. Marshall must fight off a sudden plethora of rampaging werewolves, all while trying to save as many of his colleagues as he can. Unfortunately, in the end, he can only save the best looking of all his coworkers, the lovely Dr. Amy Chen, who I assume has a PhD in Pretty.

Dr. Marshall and Dr. Amy are determined to make it back to Dr. Marshall's house, because Dr. Amy is a secondary character, and thus does not have a personal life or home address to worry about. There's just one problem... if the supermoon shines on them, they will "wolf out."

Luckily for them, while the experiment was ultimately a failure, the experimental moonscreen did last for about an hour before it stopped working. So, slathering themselves in goo, they venture out into the trashy chaotic hellscape that is Florida at night, which is even worse now that it is overrun by werewolves. Unfortunately, as they scramble through the streets, Dr. Amy is dragged away by werewolves, but by this point, she has fulfilled her usefullness to the story, so Dr. Marshall need only pause to look sad for a moment before moving on.

Meanwhile, the local werewolves are partying it up in the suburbs, but Lucy and Emma are fine, hunkered down in their fortified home. But then the stupid asshole white guy with Rambo delusions next door ends up blowing up his house, exposing himself to the supermoon and becoming a werewolf. He immediately goes after the ladies in the neighborhood, because of course he does. All this noise attracts other nearby werewolves too, who then join in on the attack of the house, and shit is looking pretty bad.

But then Dr. Marshall shows up, and teaches an impromptu class on Werewolf Butt-kicking 101, even turning himself into a werewolf in order to take out the stupid asshole white guy gun nut who, as per usual, had made the fact that he was a dumb asshole into everyone else's problem. Then the sun rises, and everyone who is still alive goes to brunch, presumably.

I'm always happy to check out a Frank Grillo movie. He's a good time. I enjoyed him lending his voice to Creature Commandos, and I'm looking forward to him in both the upcoming Superman movie and Season 2 of The Peacemaker. Other than that, and obviously besides his role as Brock Rumlow, AKA the supervillain known as Crossbones, in the movies Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Age of Ultron, the best Frank Grillo movie, in my opinion, is Purge 2. And besides such obvious picks as American Werewolf in London, or Silver Bullet, or maybe some of the newer classics like Werewolves Within, or Ginger Snaps, or The Cursed, my favorite werewolf film is Dog Soldiers.

I'm telling you this so that you'll understand that when I first heard about Werewolves, I was hoping that it'd be a combination of Purge 2 and Dog Soldiers, and it kind of was, but also, it was definitely not on par with those films. Not even close. Unfortunately, Werewolves is pretty disappointing, because it's cheap and not very good.

The movie’s small budget is very limiting, and these limits are very obvious on screen, especially as it's clear that this was filmed in as few different locations as possible, and only from the tightest of angles. On top of that, its interior sets are not impressive at all, often looking like freshly painted plywood on opening night at the local community theatre. And then the film ends with such a sudden cut to credits, that at first I thought I had sat on the remote by accident, only to find... nope, that was actually just how the film ends. And while I don’t know if this is true or not, sudden endings like that make it seem like they either ran out of footage, or maybe they didn't have enough time to finish filming. Whatever the reason, it just adds to the feeling of amateurishness. Maybe worst of all, the CGI werewolves are incredibly ugly, and the transformation sequence is completely disappointing. Practical effect werewolf transformations are one of those things that traditionally allow special effects crews to truly showcase their talent. They’ve won Oscars for it. The CGI version we get here is a god damn travesty. And all of this is on top of the fact that the script is terrible and obvious.

As I said, Werewolves is disappointing. I wanted a lot more fun, a slightly better story, and much better effects. It just... fell too short in every way. That said, I did appreciate the occasional use of man-in-suit werewolves. That was good, at least, but honestly, that was pretty much the only good thing.

Sadly, this one is a pass.