This was a delightful, fairly short film. There is a bit of gore. There are monsters. My suspension of disbelief was only tested once.
I really didn't know what to expect with this one. I'm not a gigantic comic or werewolf fan, so I'd never heard of Werewolf By Night. All I knew going in was that is was in black and white and there was a werewolf in there somewhere. The "creep factor" was also understood. It's October and it's literally called "Werewolf By Night" so... yeah. Obvious. The choice to go with black and white for this film was a good one, I think. It did minimize the gore factor because, due to everything being in color these days, we're so used to seeing the blood stand out. It definitely didn't, even in the one instance where it was splashed on the camera. Werewolf By Night just didn't feel gory. And, ya know, the black and white just added to the atmosphere.
The setting was pretty cool. I liked the faux Egyptian decor on that entryway. The maze was cool on the overhead shot. The tomb Elsa and Jack find themselves in was interesting. Don't think I've ever seen back-lit name plates before. Looked good with the black and white though. I thought the multi-purpose room with all the monster heads was interesting. Jack had an interesting change in reaction to those when they showed up later in the film as opposed to his original reaction.
I thought the hunter characters were real bland. We got an proper introduction to three of them, two of whom are the main characters. Otherwise, they were just set-dressing and monster-fodder. The main villain of the piece was likewise fairly bland, if eccentric. The Bloodstone is confusing to me. It isn't really explained exactly what it can do, but it does do a couple different things. It's just referred to as "a powerful weapon." Also, does it come with an instruction manual? Cuz there were also chants involved... I get that it's supposed to be passed down through the family, so I assume there's training involved, too... but yeah... not a fan of it, really.
I did like Elsa and Jack as protagonists. Elsa was just my kind of jaded femme fetale type. Just completely done with all the nonsense but forced to deal with it anyway. Jack was somewhat amusing and pretty smart. He's so obviously the fish out of water in the beginning, it amused me. Also, I like Ted. Pretty sure everyone liked Ted.
The fight scenes were fun. I definitely knew someone was getting their arm chopped off when he's seen reaching around a door. There is a spot in there where one of the background baddies just kind of throws his weapon aside for no readily explained reason... Like, while he was being focused on by the camera. It was one of the few spots where I yelled at the TV during this. I mentioned in my opening that my suspension of disbelief was tested once, that was with Elsa's head. She definitely should have been more injured from being slammed into a concrete/rock surface multiple times.
The werewolf did not disappoint. Like I said before, I'm not a big werewolf fan, however, I have also seen enough on screen to have opinions. This werewolf was properly werewolf-y. No skinny, hairless varieties here. The werewolf was nice and hairy with a nice, in-between kind of face. Definitely more of your classic horror movie werewolf than most modern interpretations. I also enjoyed how much the werewolf jumped around, utilizing the environment instead of just plowing through the requisite goons squad on foot. Not entirely sure some of the parkour was really necessary, but it was fun to watch.
I honestly think that's all I can get into without spoilers. Highly recommend watching. It's definitely different than anything Disney's put out in the MCU so far. And it's short! About the same amount of time as an episode of Game of Thrones or whatever.
No comments:
Post a Comment