What I Liked: They went for a human sized wolf that stands on its hind legs which is probably my favorite type of design when it comes to these creatures. When you can get a decent glimpse the elongated snout and teeth and muscular body are menacing features. Even though this guy passed through many different effects artists (I’ll explain soon) the final product turned out surprisingly good.
When there are practical werewolf effects they’re kinda cool
looking. I mean when it’s a guy in a
suit (Derek Mears (Friday the 13th (2009))) maybe it’s a
little too obvious and cheesy (although that could’ve been how they decided to
shoot and edit) but to have someone in the room for real goes a long way and is
very charming.
It’s really all about the second half of the film. Once we have a better idea of what’s
happening things start to get a lot more fun.
The protagonists are discovering their newly acquired powers, villain
motivation garners a neat twist, the fight scenes are energetic and
choreographed alright and some characters become less annoying to the point of
fully redeeming themselves.
*Mild spoiler on this last point* I really appreciate
that the finale doesn’t involve a bunch of full on werewolves battling each
other but rather humans with some super power werewolf abilities. This is a clever way for the audience to
follow the action. Otherwise it would be
furry animals bouncing all over the room and we wouldn’t be able to tell who
the fuck is who.
What I Didn’t Like: In order to get to the more
enjoyable second half you unfortunately have to sit through an abysmal first
half. There’s uninteresting characters,
internet sleuthing, a bad dream sequence, a strained romance and stupid high
school bullying leftover from the 80’s.
Everyone is either bland or annoying.
Our leads Ellie (Christina Ricci (The Smurfs 2)) and Jimmy (Jesse
Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale)) exhibit both those qualities. They’re brother and sister living in a house
in LA by themselves which isn’t explained, they have no chemistry, everyone’s
kidna mean to both of them, Eisenberg’s fast talking schtick is grating, Ricci
looks checked out and it’s just terrible.
In some spots the editing is ridiculously coked up and
absolutely horrendous. I think the
editing is too fast paced in general here but in three or four spots it goes
off the fucking rails into Saw territory. Boy, that mid 2000’s style hasn’t come around
to being nearly as funny as I want it to be yet. How much longer do I have to wait?
This is such a fucking dated movie. Ellie works for Craig Kilborn’s late night
talk show, Scott Baio (Zapped!) has an oddly large role as himself,
there’s an angsty nu metal-esque soundtrack, Jimmy goes emo when he becomes a
werewolf by straightening his hair and letting it hang in front of his face, primitive
(by today’s standards) internet websites, there’s a bunch of gay jokes and the
aforementioned CGI.
Overall Impressions: Ok so here’s the deal, this
picture went through the fucking wringer with the original script being almost
completely shot before the Weinstein’s at Dimension and Miramax decided none of
it was any good. So after several
rewrites, three rounds of reshoots, a bump down in rating from R to PG-13 and
various characters being dropped (whose scenes were already filmed) what
should’ve been a couple of month process took two and a half goddamn
years! What may have been the biggest
crime is the legendary Rick Baker did the original effects but none of them
wound up in the film. After that another
illustrious effects house, KNB, were brought on to the project but apparently
most of their practical shit also got cut from the movie and was replaced by
CGI. Jeez Louise.
I don’t know if I can recommend this one. It’s Wes Craven’s werewolf picture so of
course it has to be seen if you’re a big horror fan. If you’re looking for a study on a train
wreck of a film this wouldn’t satisfy though.
It was essentially entirely remade so there isn’t much figuring out how
the filmmakers tried to glue the old and new fragments together to form a
Frankenstein concoction. So the piece
ends up in a real messed up strange area.
Everyone got screwed on this job, Wes Craven, writer Kevin Williamson (Scream,
I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Faculty), the actors who got cut
(Skeet Ulrich, Mandy Moore, John C McGinley), the effects work that didn’t get
shown off, my ears and eyes for some questionable soundtrack and editing
choices, etc. But you know, fuck
me. It was right there in the
title. The movie truly is cursed.
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