Harefooted Halloween: Bad Moon

What I Liked: In a move you generally only see in light hearted family movies the dog is the main protagonist and hero.  Thor (actually played by three different dogs) doesn’t speak, we never hear an inner monologue, there’s no narration or anything else like that.  Yet we know exactly what he’s thinking and feeling through his body language and actions and it’s an impressive feat.

Another unique aspect is the dynamic of the human characters.  Ted (Michael Paré (Village of the Damned (1995))) comes to visit his sister, Janet (Mariel Hemingway (Manhattan)), and her son, Brett (Mason Gamble (Arlington Road)), and stays with them for a few days.  There’s no romance or father figure dealings or any of the usual hokey crap you get with a typical setup of a husband and wife, estranged lovers or a single parent and their kid.  The mood is refreshing with a lack of sexual tension and strained parent-child relationships.

The werewolf design is really good.  It’s ferocious, wild eyed, tall, imposing, muscular and hairy.  The head is very pointed and wolf-like and it’s bipedal which are two features I strongly prefer in a werewolf (ones with flatter human faces or that roam on all fours aren’t as neat looking in my opinion).  The animatronics used for the facial movements are well done too.  They weren’t afraid to show this thing off either as it’s in a lot of the picture.

What I Didn’t Like: The way they shot the werewolf though is a mixed bag.  Half the time they use a good angle, throw some dramatic lighting on it, play with the shadows and try to make the beast look terrifying.  Then the other half of the time it’s shot so flatly exposing the effect for too much of what it is, a robot wolf head on a dude’s body.  It’s so weird to me how inconsistently this was handled.

The opening involving a sex scene in the jungle that gets interrupted by a werewolf attack feels out of place with the rest of it.  Even though all the werewolf attacks are kinda gory and nasty this one comes across more graphic and certainly gratuitous.

There’s a transformation scene that has some very bad looking CGI.  This part is wisely excised in the director’s cut (from what I read).

Overall Impressions: Doing a dead serious dog vs. werewolf movie is a cool and unique approach to a tale we’ve otherwise seen many times before.  This was based on a book called “Thor” by Wayne Smith and even though I’ve read that some pretty sizeable changes were made the core idea is there.

The screenplay was adapted by Eric Red (he also directs) who was Kathryn Bigelow’s writing partner back in the day on Near Dark and Blue Steel.  He likes to explore different twists on tried and true storylines and Bad Moon definitely fits in with those in that respect.

One big thing I appreciate is that Red and co went for a truly deadly and vicious version of the werewolf.  It doesn’t fuck around.  The monster tears everyone to shreds in a horrific manner each time.  The end battle with Thor is actually a little hard to watch because that dog gets aggressively thrown around and swatted a ton.

The juxtaposition of this ferocity and the non-werewolf stuff is sorta jarring though.  Aside from the sex scene at the beginning there isn’t any other sexuality, cursing or lewd behavior.  It’s pretty squeaky clean.  Whether it was done on purpose or not this makes the violence feel extra brutal.

I recommend this guy.  It has confidence in the material and its creature design.  Switching up the hero to a dog and playing around with the other characters’ relationships is a welcomed change.

Plus it’s got such a 90’s vibe with the pacific northwest setting and a soundtrack that could be straight out of a thriller from that time like Disclosure or The Hand that Rocks the Cradle.