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.
No comments:
Post a Comment