"Wolves" (2015) Werewolves, More Like Borewolves (I know, I'll see myself out)

The Trailer:

Director: David Hayter
Main Cast: Lucas Till, Merritt Patterson, Stephan McHattie, Jason Momoa, & John Pyper-Ferguson
Plot Synopsis: A teenage boy, Cayden (Lucas Till), flees his hometown after he thinks he killed his parents. Before the murder and on the road, he is discovering a strange truth about himself, but wants to know more. With the help of a bizarre stranger, Wild Joe (John Pyper-Ferguson), Cayden heads to a small town called Lupine Ridge where he finds learns the strange truth of his family history.

Such potential, just executed poorly. Oh man. You know, I've never been a self-declared werewolf genre fan (Yes werewolf is it's own genre, alright!). But as I watch more and more werewolf films, I've found that I actually like the genre quite a bit and am very critical of movies posing to be as such. With that being said, I'm not an expert on the genre. I haven't watched every werewolf movie known to human-kind. But I definitely know a good one when I see it and a bad one when I see it. And Wolves is a bad one.

Where do I start? I guess with the plot. Have you ever heard of a more mediocre plot for a werewolf, action, horror flick? I mean, take out the werewolf bit and this could be the plot for any b-movie horror movie. It's dull. And what makes the story worse is that little of it makes any sense. I'm sorry about this but there are about to be some spoilers (!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!) Okay so shortly after Cayden gets to this little town of Lupine Ridge, he finds out that Conner (Jason Momoa), the head of a vicious werewolf gang, is his father, though Connor doesn't know this, thus making Cayden a werewolf. Not only that, but Connor took Cayden's mother "by force" (which I suppose is a PG way of saying rape) and then after she gave birth to Cayden, she killed herself. We later find out that Connor realizes he is getting older and wants to leave a legacy (i.e. a child) and so is going to take Angelina (Meritt Patterson), Cayden's new girlfriend (because of course he had to fall in love), "by force". This is also sanctioned by the leaders of the town as they don't want any confrontatiosn with Connor's gang. Once we find all this out, the whole trying to find out more about his family thing is completely thrown out the window so that the movie can now focus on how Cayden is going to save his new girlfriend. My gripe with this is that instead of Cayden trying to convince Connor that "hey I'm your son, so you don't need to rape Angelina" he just immediately decides I'm going to attempt to intimidate Connor into not hurting Angelina. Yeah, intimidate, not kill or hurt or anything like that: Cayden just wants to scare Connor into submission. And you know, I can see why Cayden would'nt want to approach Connor with the information that he's his son, but just the fact that that train of thought never crossed his mind is preposterous. Now for the biggest problem I have with the movie I have to go back and explain some things. Okay, so pretty early on we find out Cayden was adopted by normal parents (not werewolves). Later when we find out who his real parents are, we find out why he was put up for adoption: John (Stephan McHattie), Cayden's great uncle, didn't want Connor to raise Cayden. A while later, towards the end, we find out that John has a family tree type thing that lists various werewolf bloodlines. My question is why would they send Cayden off to be adopted by non-werewolf parents when they knew of other werewolf families? I mean they had to have known that one day Cayden wouldn't be able to contain his werewolf nature and would most likely hurt people because of it. That just doesn't make sense. (!!!Spoiler Alert Over!!!) So now that the ridiculous logic of the movie has been pointed out, we can talk about the sheer dullness of the film. There is little to no drama, and the drama that is present is near soap-opera levels that it becomes laughable. At a certain point, it almost becomes a children's movie with a let's outsmart the fox type of story. Ugh! And don't even get me started on the absurd dialogue. Oh, goodness, it is so bad. Mostly there is just a lot of cheesy one-liners that can only evoke a small chuckle, and not the intrigue and drama that the writer was going for.

Now for the production and cinematography. Production wise, the movie looks great for it's budget. It had a fairly small budget, but the creators used it wisely and made a fantastic looking movie. It's crisp, the colors are vibrant, sound is good, lighting is fantastic, the score is decent , etc., etc. Now, direction wise and cinematography wise, there are some questionable choices. Somehow it feels like multiple people were directing this movie. The way some scenes are shot don't match with other scenes: in other words there are various directing styles utilized. Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it fails when all the scenes were edited together. With all these various directing styles, it feels like the movie didn't know what it wanted to be. A horror? A drama? A coming-of-age tale? An action flick? What do you want to be? Overall the cinematography is incoherent and it's jarring to see these different styles trying to be meshed together. It just didn't work. Present also, are truly bad shots and camera angles, like all the scenes of Cayden on the motorcycle. Additionally, with the editing, there are some scenes shown in slow-motion that didn't need to be in slow-mo. And while, yes the slow-mo scenes are mostly during fighting sequences, it still wasn't needed. Furthermore, there is the use of a voice-over by our protagonist, Cayden, that served no purpose and was dropped sometime in the first half of the movie. The acting is decent, but nothing to talk about so I won't. The cherry on top of this underwhelming cake is the special effects of the werewolves themselves. Now I'm sure that it took some real skill and hard work to create the look of the werewolves, but they just weren't up to the standards that I would like them to be. They actually reminded me of the rippers from Tank Girl (which, by the way, if you haven't seen Tank Girl I suggest you watch it).

The top photo is a werewolf from this movie and the picture below is of a ripper from Tank Girl. Do you see the similarities? Or is it just me? I don't know. Anyways, not only are the werewolves not super cool (but professionally and aptly created nonetheless) there is no great transition scene. You know most werewolf movies have it; a scene where you see all the gory, bone-cracking details of what it takes to transition from human to wolf. That one scene is usually what makes or breaks a werewolf film. And yet, Wolves doesn't have one. I mean sure we see small clips of hair growing out of their backs, of their nails growing longer, but never a full, sequence which is a bit disappointing.

Overall, I wasn't impressed. For creators to make a movie with a creature that we've seen many times before, and that's been done better before, their movie has to be so amazing and well-done that it is set apart from all the others. It's gotta be able to pay homage to the classics, but still be original enough that the fans of the classics and new fans will enjoy it all the same. The one thing I did like about Wolves is the mythology that explains certain things about the wolves, such as the original bloodlines and how to become one and all that fun stuff. Would I watch this again? Nah, not even on a full moon.