Everyone loves a good slasher movie. You know, where there’s a serial killer on the loose in a small town, and it’s our job to figure out “whodunit” with each member of the cast being killed off slowly one by one? Or when a husband/father goes stir crazy in a possessed mansion and starts killing his family? Unfortunately Wolf Moon is not one of those films. It’s painful, and not in the good way.
From the very beginning, you feel like you’re watching a student project. Not gritty and disturbingly realistic like Blair Witch, but amateurish, with an incoherent plot, obvious editing, laughable dialogue, and unfortunate acting. The title card comes up showing us the definition of the word cursed: “to be afflicted with, suffer from the coming down of calamity on someone by a spirit, deity, demon or one of the dead esp. from a desire for revenge, resulting in an evil, malevolent being.”
Man, I’m shivering already.
This is followed by a black and white scene of a young girl walking home from school. There are splotches of red color mixed in, like her book bag and eventually, her blood, when a young man comes out of the woods suddenly and affirms: “You’re gonna be my girlfriend.” Is this a cheap nod to Sin City? Perhaps.
He then throws her to the ground and bludgeons her with a rock. She screams, but her protests are humorous (i.e, “Stop, you’re hurting me!”) as opposed to the gut wrenching, blood curdling screams you’d expect to hear if one were actually being murdered. Next we get a panoramic shot of the desert with a female voice talking about how fate and real love are confusing.
I love a good voice over. They can be grounding, intimate, and incredibly effective. Like in Sunset Boulevard or American Beauty, for example. We can only assume that the voice we’re hearing is that of the unfortunate victim, and this is her melodramatic account of how her boyfriend turned out to be a werewolf.
The next scene is of two truckers driving down the road at night. They stumble upon a dead body, then also get attacked and killed. At this point we’re annoyed because we have been shown all of these different characters but we have no idea who anyone is or how they relate to one another. Just as we think our torture is about to end, there is yet another open road scene with a guy driving down a stretch of open desert. Is this the killer from before? Maybe. Is this someone new? I have no idea. He’s brunette just like the one who killed the student, but I’d have to rewind to be sure. Never a good sign.
Enter token creepy killer dude (Billy Drago), fondling a photograph of a young girl (have we seen her before?) classic crazy guy newspaper clippings strewn about his trailer and a gun on his desk. Come on, Billy Drago, haven’t you made somewhat of a career out of being the creepy killer dude in other semi-entertaining, at least coherent films? We’re 10 minutes in and the audience still has no idea what the hell is happening.
Dan (Chris Divecchio), the guy from the open desert scene looks for work at a mechanic shop. He meets Amy (Ginny Weirick), one assumes, the girl from the voiceover. Sparks fly, he gives her a cactus to stand in for a bouquet of flowers and we’re on our merry way.
Or not, because then we’re suddenly taken to Houston Texas where yet another rough and tumble guy picks up a beautiful girl at a bar. He sex with her in the back of a truck, is beaten up by a few other rough necks before turning into a werewolf with teeth like Pennywise the “It” clown and killing them all. Is this all in the same film? Yes.
Dan follows Amy home one night and saves her from being attacked. Montage of Amy and Dan “falling in love.” Walking, dancing, kissing, twirling. Dan imagines his hands turning furry and scratching her face. Looks tortured. It’s then revealed that he is the possibly the one committing the many crimes in town. Dan stands up in the desert, screams “Why me?” and “What did I do?” in a way that makes you wonder if in reality, he’s just a PA thrown in front of the camera one day, or an out of work underwear model.
Soon we are given some insight into how these characters relate. Creepy killer dude is Charles Thibodeaux, a cop from another town who knows the truth about what’s been happening here. Bender (the man from the bar) is Dan’s father. This all comes down to a kind of father-son supernatural battle. I think the best part of this film was getting to watch Maria Conchita Alonso as the town sheriff.
Sidenote: the characters in this film love to use the F word. Which rings false given all of the other sub-par elements. Sometimes it works (Goodfellas). Sometimes it doesn’t.
DVD Bonus Features
Audio commentary with director Dana Mennie. He explains that the black and white scene in the beginning is supposed to depict a teenaged Bender, shown as a serial killer before he was ever cursed. “I’m going to torture you for the next two hours” he says. And I don’t doubt it.
"Wolf Moon" is on sale June 22, 2010 and is rated R. Horror. Directed by Dahvi Waller. Written by Dana Mennie, Ian Cook . Starring Billy Drago, Chris Devecchio , Ginny Weirick, Maria Conchite Alonso, Max Ryan.
