Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Werewolf: The Beast Among Us

This is a good example of a dumped project.  Universal put some big stakes in bringing back its classic monster line.  Unfortunately they put all their money on "Van Helsing" and "The Wolfman."  Both films basically crashed and burned.  So someone said, "hey let's reboot 'The Wolfman."  Well, there most have either been a sea change in the management of Universal or testing came back fairly odious because this fairly big budget project went straight to video.

Is that a bad thing, though?

The film creates a universe more in line with "Van Helsing," in that werewolves are so common that there are whole packs of werewolf hunters.  They are a gritty bunch who are uncouth but very well armed.  In this instance they are drawn to a remote village that is suffering from a rather odd werewolf.  There is a lot of tension between the villagers and the hunters.  One of the villagers, the young doctor's assistant, wants to help them to save the village and impress his girlfriend but they are leery of letting an amateur into their game.

The production values are first rate and the actors definitely are into scenary eating to a ghoulish degree.  The plot is a basic "who is it?" with fractions adding frictions.  There are some nice bits like a doctor's office with a bullet hole ridden wall to take care of all the victims of the werewolf.  Overall, this is a nice bit of cheese and deserved better than direct to DVD.


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