Something about a monster in a village or something?
The human mind is conditioned to associate given words with corresponding concepts or imagery; cold to snow, hot to fire, etc.
I now associate the terms such as convoluted, contrived and boring with “Werewolf: The Beast Among Us,” 90 minutes of 12 different intersecting subplots, none of which have anything to say.
From what I could actually discern and retain from the confusing and repetitive stupor of a viewing, the film follows a young man with ambitions of being a doctor, who joins a group of Victorian era looking werewolf hunters led by Manny from “Scarface,” who plays an American cowboy, after his village finds itself the victim of a werewolf attack.
Boiling the movie down to even that was a chore that I hope to not have to repeat often in the near future.
“Werewolf: The Beast Among Us” may be one of the busiest films that I have ever seen in my life. Forgoing the route of following a strong central thread to its plot of weeding out the werewolf among the people, the film instead opts to pile on subplots and smaller stories focused on the village citizens that would have ordinarily been extras in traditional horror movies.
While the format is an admirable effort to diverge from formula, its payoff is unfortunately not so much disappointing as it is nonexistent.
The numerous plot threads that are only tangentially connected to the grand mystery don’t really conclude; they just stop, which only serves to muddle a narrative that was rather dull to begin with. Maybe these divergences would have had more impact if the performances were even the least bit memorable but nobody in this film goes beyond the call of duty. Everybody showed up, did their job, took their check and left the same amount of impact one would expect extras on a film to leave, minus the greater sense of irritation at having to watch them for a longer stretch of time than they should be allowed onscreen.
Payoff in this movie was almost entirely reliant on forming a connection with the narrative that simply never grows thanks to the bland writing and weak direction swirling into one giant bore.
I really wanted to give “Werewolf: The Beast Among Us” a chance too. The narrative bored me to tears so badly that I actually fell asleep somewhere in the middle of it. Assuming the lack of logic that occurred throughout the remainder of the film required the missing details, I actually rewatched the film in its entirety the following day only to discover that the 7 minutes I missed were nothing more than perspective shifts to characters that have no resolution by the end of the movie.
In its final 20 minutes the mystery does admittedly begin to come to a head in such a way that is actually somewhat clever but its ultimately too little too late, which is a true shame. With all of the money that went into the production design, the filmmakers clearly had sincere intentions.
Regardless of the A that I can give it for effort however, that doesn't change the fact that the only thing that I remember about “Werewolf: The Beast Among Us” just 1 day after a second viewing is how brutally dull it is regardless of its occasionally shining moments.
½ Shatner
Bottom Line: There was a good concept in here somewhere but it’s just not worth sitting through what went wrong to see it in action.
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