31 Days of Halloween October Horror Movie Challenge - Day 9: The Howling Reborn (2010)

 

Day 9 - The Howling: Reborn(2010)

Platform:

Borrowed from OverDrive. 

Quote:

“There are two types of people in the world: Those who take what they want and those who get taken. Which are you?”

Synopsis:

Will Kidman is about to come into his inheritance. That inheritance? Being the leader of a pack of werewolves bent on world domination and putting the humans in their place. This might put a kink in his plans to graduate and date the girl of his dreams.

Review:

This and the original Howling were the only two in the Howling saga that I didn’t watch last year as part of my Werewolf list. Even given some of the weird indy stuff I wound up watching for that theme, this would have been way down on the list of good werewolf movies.

First, there are barely any werewolves in the movie until the very end, and you don’t even get a good payoff with a great transformation scene. The design of the wolves isn't great, but I’ve also seen way worse. I’d put it a little below the creature design from Bad Moon, of which I was not a fan. Very stiff, and they show it in such a way that it becomes obvious just how stiff it is. The werewolves in this movie though have a lot less impressiveness to their size, and they look like their heads are twice as big as their bodies. The creature from Bad Moon also at least had some great detail to its look so that when they did show it for long periods of time, as long as it wasn't doing its bad animatronic movements, it still looked impressive. The worst part though is the transformation. Rather than anything awesome like the skin ripping away to reveal the creature within or the twisting of the body as it reshapes into the creature, all we get is a quick, generic CGI morph from human to wolf, mostly done by focusing on the eyes. That’s it.

The story also gets pretty nonsensical as the movie begins with a pregnant woman getting attacked by werewolf vision. Ok, not a big deal, don't want to give away too much right off the bat. I can go with that. But, it's called The Howling. I think we know we're dealing with a werewolf, you could do something more than wolf-vision. So as we watch through its eyes, this thing talks about how the pregnant woman can’t keep the future from him, or some other cryptic nonsense which doesn’t matter anyway since we never learn who or what this creature is. Will Kidman is the unborn baby, who survives the attack and we're led to believe the mother died at the creature's hands, er claws... fangs? It really doesn't matter, because later in the film, the mother shows up alive and Will is a teenager living with his father.

The mother decides to seduce Will’s father who apparently doesn’t recognize his late wife because she didn’t age, died her hair blonde, and ditched her glasses (she doesn’t need them anymore now that she’s - SURPRISE - a werewolf). So now the mom wants Will back so that he can help her lead her wolfpack into the future. SO WHAT WAS THAT WEREWOLF VISION ATTACK ABOUT AT THE BEGINNING!?!?!? So much of this movie makes no sense.

It's so lazy about everything. They even slacked on their symbolism by naming the main character Kidman. A coming of age story about a boy approaching graduation, getting his first girlfriend, being torn between destiny and free will. He’s not ready to lead, but he’s not interested in following. And they named him Kidman. Kid. Man. I need a facepalm emoji to put right here.

The film does have one pretty brutal kill. During a scene in which Will’s high school bully and former boyfriend to Will’s current girlfriend pulls a gun and starts hunting down Will (who was still human the last time this guy saw him, but has now turned into wolf-vision, no actual transformation or wolf form yet), Will (in wolf-vision) knocks the bully over a stairwell railing and he falls to his death, smashing into other landings on the way down. They actually did a pretty good job of making those hits feel solid.

That’s about the only thing the movie has going for it though, so I’m going to have to give this a not recommend. Don’t waste your time on this one. Go watch the original, or if you want something a little different in your werewolf movies, go watch The Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf.

Movie Count:

New: 7

Total: 9

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