everyday is halloween!

 werewolves [2024]

where to begin.  clicking thru a streaming service for something to watch i come across this flick about a pandemic of werewolves starring frank grillo.  i am a grillo fan.  i think this dude is underappreciated & under used in horror & action pics.  he has a sinewy strength & a face with rugged, handsome features & great hair to boot.  so when i watched the trailer i thought, why the fuck not.

when i hit the play button on my remote is when things went south.  you see, this movie takes place a year after the werewolf pandemic.  the cause was a supermoon that turned everyone, i think, exposed to moonlight into a hairy howler bent on ripping apart any living thing.  around a billion people perished.  the world is still rebuilding.  another supermoon is forecast.  everyone who can is hardening their homes.  including grillo, who is, i think, a molecular biologist who helped develop a kind of vaccine against the effects of the supermoon light, called, get this, moonscreen.  i shit you not.  grillo's sister-in-law & niece, who lost their soldier husband/father in last year's pandemic, batten down the hatches with grillo's help while he trots off to the CDC.

lou diamond phillips plays the CDC director.  three volunteer test subjects, all survivors cuz they got the scars to prove it, of the werewolf pandemic, agree to get chained up & locked into tiny cells to test the vaccine administered as a body spray.  of course, shit goes sideways & the test subjects turn into hairy monsters to escape & cause mayhem!  that's when grillo, along with his colleague, doctor chen, played by katrina law, whose husband is one of the test subjects, slip off their lab coats, don tactical gear, grab weapons & ammo, body spray on some moonscreen & head out into the night to grillo's family.  

well fuck me.  the world building sucks.  the werewolves look like stunt people wearing oversized dog costumes.  the premise is cool.  a worldwide werewolf pandemic?  sign me the fuck on.  but i guess the budget was too tight to actually show a world where a billion people are murdered by goddamn werewolves.  i love werewolves too.  they are, like grillo in hollywood, underused movie monsters.  they are much more terrifying to me than, say, mummies or even vampires.  but no, the production decided to try to build a world after the initial pandemic & localize the chaos & destruction to a handful of hairy critters & the odd balls roaming the streets either worshipping these creatures, yep, there's a scene where our two scientists cum soldiers fall upon a collection of goofballs lead by a dude wearing a purple boxer's robe, or a militia trying to exterminate them.  

not even the grace of frank grillo can save this flick.  the direction, by steven c. miller, who is no stranger to my beloved horror genre, is muddy & vague.  the script is nearly non-existent.  the lighting & photography are slipshod.  tho the lighting does sometimes achieve a kind of spookiness.  & grillo looks more like an older underwear model, for all the posing he does, sans shirt, than scientist.  blimey.  now, if miller got some decent dinero, a good script, & made a prequel to this movie, where we find our heroes fighting for their lives during the stunned confusion, chaos & strangeness of the initial pandemic, we might get a film.  at any rate, approach this particular pic like you would a large, hairy, fanged-up animal you might find at midnight, under a full moon, with extreme caution.

boo!