Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Werewolves’ on VOD, an Action-Horror Outing Starring Frank Grillo

By John Serba

In case it’s not entirely clear, the movie Werewolves (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) is NOT about dinosaurs, Draculas or deranged mutant killer monster gerbils. No, it’s about – spoiler alert – werewolves. Promise. And it stars Frank Grillo, who turns up in about a half-dozen of these similarly cheapo movies a year, which is precisely why we like him. Doesn’t mean we always like the movies he’s in, but hey, in the era of the dying action star, we have to embrace all the greasy shiny he-men we can.

WEREWOLVES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Beware the supermoon, nightbitches! A year ago, it turned ONE BILLION PEOPLE into werewolves. Yep, a billion. It was a problem, a turn of events that was far from ideal. Chaos reigned, and this time, it was once again wolf-related. You might say it turned Miami into Maimi. No, really. It says it right on the character’s T-shirt: “MAIMI FIRE DEPT.” I hope it’s a typo, because that’s funnier than if it was an inside joke. The shirt is in multiple shots and nobody bothered to fix it so it’s gotta be a joke right? SURE. A science man explains this stuff – sans an explanation for the T-shirt, mind you – and you look at him and wonder hey is that Lou Diamond Phillips and yes, indeed, it is Lou Diamond Phillips. Good on him for still getting some work.

Anyway. The world is staring down the barrel of another supermoon, but hey, at least everyone’s prepared this time. Case in point, Wes Marshall (Grillo), who’s prepping a house for one night o’ hell: Bear traps, tall fences, razor wire, sprinkler connected to a barrel full of pepper spray, surveillance system, generator and last but not least a big-ass shotgun. This’ll protect the hell outta his sister-in-law Lucy (Ilfenesh Hadera) and niece Emma (Kammdyn Gary), who he’s watching out for after his firefighter brother died during the last lycanthropy outbreak. He can’t be there for them on the big night, though, because he’ll be out, being a bilomologist doing scientimific things in an attempt to curb the werewolf pandemic. They’ve developed a moonscreen and skin spray and “nanotech eyedrops” that’ll limit supermoon exposure on humans, and keep them humans instead of werewolves. It’s all in the experimental stage so until it’s thoroughly tested, the citizenry will have to fend for themselves in a world where all emergency services have been suspended until the werewolfpocalypse subsides at dawn. Why would they do that? For the sake of the movie, of course. There is no other good reason.

Things go poorly down at the lab for Wes and his schmience partner Amy (Katrina Law). Werewolves everywhere. They go on the run, avoiding werewolves, shooting werewolves, hitting werewolves with trucks. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Lucy and Emma hunker down and hope all remains hunky-dory for the gun nut next door (James Michael Cummings) and the neighborhood babysitter (Lydia Styslinger). Sure would be a shame if these ancillary characters became Alpo Prime Cuts for Werewolves, or werewolves themselves. So, will all the main characters survive, or what? Place your bets!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Werewolves is The Purge crossed with The Howling, or maybe something lesser than that, like Silver Bullet.

Performance Worth Watching: *sighs deeply*

Memorable Dialogue: Grillo mounts the machine gun, aims it at the werewolves, pauses dramatically and delivers the heartwrenching line: “HEY! BITE ME!”

Sex and Skin: Nah.

Photo: Briarcliff Entertainment

Our Take: Werewolves makes me want to grab director Steven C. Miller by the lapels and shake him so his head goes bobble bobble boppity bobble, because this movie boasts the most annoying display of lighting I’ve perhaps ever seen: strobes, flickering fluorescents and so much LENS FLARE it must have been on clearance down the WalMart. Every shot is sliced apart by LENS FLARE and when the camera pans away from one source of LENS FLARE it inevitably finds another, sometimes two or three. Why? I cannot hazard a guess. It’s an aesthetic, I guess. And I’m convinced the werewolves found the electrical box on every building that’s a set piece in this movie and chewed through the wires just enough to make the lights constantly blink and flutter, perhaps to cover up how rubbery they look. But hey, at least they’re made of prosthetics, animatronics and faux fur, and not CGI, right? Let’s count that blessing: One!

Good luck getting to two, though. Werewolves is the kind of movie that knows it’s cheap and lame yet doesn’t understand that cheap and lame can be fun if you do it right. It has its tongue halfway in its cheek and one out of four tent stakes in the ground to make camp. So it just kinda exists while being noisy. It follows Wes and Amy’s loud, yet boring survival saga and Lucy and Emma’s loud, yet boring survival saga, until it all becomes one loud, yet boring saga, engaging in what-is-this-nonsense action sequences to match its what-is-this-nonsense plot. And you’re left with the nagging sense that it could be far more entertaining than it is.

Our Call: MAIMI you shouldn’t bother with this one? SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.