It’s always fun when Hollywood seems to release the same movie twice in a very short timespan. You know what I’m talking about. Like how, in the 90’s, we’d get two flicks about volcanoes in a few months or two outings with an asteroid hurtling towards Earth in a short window. Two studios would have a similar idea at the same time SOMEHOW, and the American people get to vote with their wallets on who did it better.

Such is what we are seeing in late 2024 / early 2025 with the showdown between Werewolves and The Wolfman. At first blush, the moods look incredibly dissimilar in each. The former advertises itself as a brutal, world-wide conflict between man and lycanthropes; the latter as a closer to the ground pure horror tale of a family in peril. 

But still! Both are about werewolves! So let the comparisons begin!

I have thus far only seen Werewolves–as of this writing, we are still waiting on the release of The Wolfman–and it is the story of Wesley, a military man and soldier / CDC scientist (which is a unique combination of careers) one year AFTER a Supermoon turned a large population of Earth into… you guessed it… werewolves.

Why a year after the fact? Well the Supermoon is coming back! And as society prepares to keep themselves safe this time, the CDC is working on a vaccine to keep the population from turning. 

Wes has his dead brother’s family barricaded up in their home, and he is at the lab working on the cure. But, of course, things go wrong all over, and he has to make it across the city in time to save his family!

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ Who doesn’t love some practical effects? I know folks who will instantly rate movies higher for using practical effects where others will use CGI. I’m not inherently that kind of person, but even I will admit that it can be refreshing in this day and age to see a film lean heavily on keeping practical effects teams hired and doing what they love.

Now… all of this is not to say that the practical effects here are particularly stupendous or anything. The werewolves themselves look decent enough in some moments, but outright janky in others. Still! With the number of low-budget efforts I screen where the movie seems obsessed with hiding its creation so we don’t see how bad it is, it’s fun to see another movie come along, say “fuck that”, and throw its creatures all over the screen.

Yes, Werewolves is never afraid to put the titular beasts in the spotlight. At a fairly brisk 94 minutes, they don’t waste time concealing the lycanthropes and making us wait to see them. Credit to that! Werewolves really went all-in on the practical effects and swung big in putting them on full display.

+ Frank Grillo is a solid and entertaining lead in action properties. I have enjoyed his work every time I’ve gotten to see it, and ever since Boss Level, I’ve wanted to see more work from him as a lead actor. Werewolves delivers in that regard!

All the props in the world to Mr. Grillo for the shape he is in, too. Very early in the movie we get a montage of his preparing his family’s home for the Supermoon, and Frank is JACKED. He’s all muscles and bulging veins. He’s not a young man, either! 

Regardless of how he looks, he has all the chops to get these kinds of movies right. He has the perfect look for a cinematic tough guy, and he knows how to deliver a line. Regardless of my overall feelings on this movie in particular, it did nothing to change the fact that I want to see more Frank Grillo in my movies going forward. 

– This is the HEIGHT of “don’t think about it” movies where nothing makes sense, and there is wild inconsistency from moment to moment. Probably no situation is worse than when one character gets a small rip in their containment suit, and that is enough to turn them into a werewolf under the Supermoon, but later on, characters are just running around in the open night just carrying a tarp over their heads. That’s not even how light works!

And so it was that the whole ride home, my wife and I played the “But what about…?” game with this movie. Why does Wes build his family a highly protected home… but only leave them one gun with only eight shells? Why does one character stand-off with a werewolf, out-Alpha it, then just second later get swooped up and carried away by what presumably was a flying werewolf? The writing is… bad. There’s little other way to put it. The writers and director clearly wanted us to get caught up in the fun of the movie and not question things, but that can be really hard to do over and over for ninety minutes. 

– And speaking of which… I’m not even sure Werewolves was all that much fun. It takes itself a tad too seriously, even while talking about such ludicrous premises as “moonscreen”. I was having a hard time telling if bits like that were supposed to be tongue-in-cheek or serious. If the flick wanted to be the former, it could have stood with giving Wes some more Schwarzenegger-style entertaining one-liners in the face of peril. He’s got one, MAYBE two, but overall, Grillo doesn’t seem to be allowed to play it as if he’s having as much fun as the movie seems to want me to be having. 

OVERALL

Werewolves is a movie torn between worlds. Physically, it looks like a bigger-budget SyFy movie. And the level of the script bears that out. But on the other hand, it seems to be taking itself too seriously, too. The film felt like quicksilver in my hands; I just couldn’t get a grasp on it to determine what the mood was supposed to be. It clearly wanted me to shut off my brain and have a good time, but then again, there wasn’t a load of fun to be had. 

TWO stars out of FIVE