Friday, February 20, 2015

Fromage Fridays #17: Wolf Town



Third time was almost the charm.




While my desperation for a decent werewolf film has not only ended in failure but gone completely off the rails by removing the “were” part of the equation, life tends to provide us with different kinds of surprises; ones that are the calculated opposite of what you expect and the ones that please us in ways we could never have predicted.

“Wolf Town” falls into the latter territory in one of the strangest cases of sabotage I've stumbled across.

In a move that breaks ground for the Horror genre, a group of unassuming college students decide to drive out to the middle of nowhere without mobile phone coverage when their car breaks down and strands them. It’s so refreshing to see a little bit of innovation.

The stupidity of their traveling arrangements eventually lands them in an abandoned Old Western town revealed to be in the heart of the territory of a pack of vicious and strangely obsessive wolves. The 4 college kids end up in a struggle for survival to outlast the wolves until they escape to civilization.

On its own, “Wolf Town” is not so bad, it’s good; it’s just straight terrible. For a bad Horror flick to be formulaic is one thing but the mediocre performances and unlikeably bland characters make the film’s roughly 90 minute runtime feel a bit longer than it really should.

Fortunately, the movie does have one hell of a saving grace, even if it’s the lone factor that saves the film from being totally unwatchable.

In a decision that may have sounded better on paper than in execution, “Wolf Town” proudly touts the fact that it used actual wolves in its filming to portray the titular antagonistic beasts. Despite ultimately working against the films intended effect, it does ironically give the film the only thing making it worth a viewing.

The film struggles desperately to sell the real wolves onscreen as malevolently savage yet intelligent forces of nature not unlike the velociraptors of “Jurassic Park” but all tension is lost the second you see a shot of a wolf happily panting at you out of what appears to be excitement, the tension is dead.

While the trainers at least seemed to keep them under control, their inability to properly emote makes every scene of intended dread a Saturday Night Live skit waiting to happen.

The constant look of adorable panting playfulness only makes the incessant horror music playing in the background more and more hilarious the longer they remain on screen.

These wolves aren't killing machines, they’re just cute. The entire premise is predicated on running from savage creatures that look more like they want to play fetch than hunt intruders. Even when they growl and bark at their victims, they go right back to panting casually. How the editors let this go to distribution with a straight face is utterly beyond me.

The film probably would have been better using bad CGI wolves but this blunder, intended as a major point for marketing ironically provided the movie with its only major draw.

“Wolf Town” is what I like to call a “match film.” It gets one viewing to work before its effectiveness is more or less fully drained and undoubtedly won’t work on repeat viewings. The single round of riotous laughs that it may provide for that single viewing however make it narrowly worth a recommendation, made evident, if nothing else, by the capstone of the entire joke that the film builds to be; a credit for the wolves, as themselves.

1½ Shatners


Bottom Line: “Wolf Town” may be terrible but its backfire is so massive that it demands a passing glance at the very least.

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