We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
WEREWOLVES WITHIN (2021)
In 2016, Ubisoft released a multiplayer VR game called Werewolves Within, in which players need to figure out which resident of a medieval fantasy town is the werewolf that has been terrorizing the place. That game serves as the inspiration for the movie also called Werewolves Within, but this is one of those situations where you wonder why the producers bothered to pay for the rights to turn the game into a movie, when the only real connection between the two seems to be the fact that there's a werewolf in a small town. Instead of being set in the medieval village of Gallowston, the movie is set in the modern American town of Beaverfield - which means you don't get the medieval style of characters from the game, either. This could have been made as an original film without having to pay for any rights. Or they could have paid for the rights to remake Howling V: The Rebirth, because this movie has a set-up very similar to that Howling sequel - a group of people are trapped in one location by a snowstorm, and one of them is a werewolf that you don't see much of as the monster whittles down the cast. It's the same thing, but Werewolves Within will probably go over better with viewers than Howling V tends to.
Regardless of how well it reflects the source material, Werewolves Within is an entertaining horror comedy, one which leans more toward comedy most of the time. Directed by Josh Ruben, who made his feature directorial debut with last year's horror comedy Scare Me (also about a small cast being stuck in a snowbound location without electricity), and scripted by humorist Mishna Wolff, the film follows outsider Finn (Sam Richardson) into Beaverfield, where he gets set up at the Beaverfield Inn and dives into his job as a forest ranger. Finn is an endearing lead, a milquetoast fellow who listens to self-help tapes to gain confidence and drops lines like "Oh my goodness gracious" and "Heavens to Betsy" rather than swears. He makes a quick connection with local mail delivery person Cecily (Milana Vayntrub, best known for her AT&T commercials), it looks like they're going to be embarking on a romantic relationship, and I have to say that the greatest moment in Werewolves Within comes when Finn and Cecily are getting to know each other and she does a Manic Pixie Dream Girl dance to the '90s hit "The Sign" by Ace of Base while holding bottles of kombucha in each hand. I've only watched Werewolves Within in its entirety once, but I've probably replayed that dance moment a dozen times. It's fun, and a movie will always win me over with some unexpected dancing. But don't worry, Wolff's script is quite aware of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl cliché, so don't expect things to move forward too easily with Finn and Cecily.
Beaverfield is an odd town, and while Finn and Cecily are quirky characters themselves, they find themselves surrounded by people who are even more eccentric than they are. There's inn owner Jeanine (Catherine Curtin), whose missing husband was the first victim of the werewolf; Sam Parker (Wayne Duvall), who represents a company that wants to run a gas pipeline through Beaverfield, a subject the residents on split on; environmentalist Dr. Ellis (Rebecca Henderson), the one who figures out there's a lycanthrope in town; rich gay couple Devon (Cheyenne Jackson) and Joaquim (Harvey Guillen) Wolfson; wacky craft enthusiast Trisha Anderton (Michaela Watkins) and her inappropriate, handsy husband Pete (Michael Chernus); trashy couple Gwen (Sarah Burns) and Marcus (George Basil); and reclusive trapper Emerson Flint (Glenn Fleshler). When an avalanche blocks the only road out of town and the power goes out, most of these characters end up gathered together at the Beaverfield Inn. As people and animals get mauled and killed off, their interactions - already shaky due to the pipeline disagreement - get even testier.
Ruben certainly assembled a great cast for his movie. Richardson and Vayntrub are terrific as the main characters, and leave me wanting to see both of them as the leads in a lot more comedies in the future. Everyone else in the ensemble also did well bringing their characters to life, bouncing off each other is a way that is often really funny to watch. Your reaction to Werewolves Within will truly depend on whether or not you share the film's sense of humor, because there's very little werewolf action to latch on to. Once the werewolf is revealed, the design makes it pretty obvious who's underneath that fur, so the creature has to remain obscured until the climax, which means horror fans hoping to see the sight of an awesome werewolf tearing into people as they're removed from the suspect list are not going to be pleased.
Although the lines Wolff wrote and the way the actors delivered them often made me laugh, I was a bit disappointed that there wasn't more werewolf in this werewolf movie. The charm of Richardson and Vayntrub and the comedic performances carried me through to the end, but that didn't stop me from occasionally getting restless due to the lack of on screen creature attacks. The majority of the film's 96 minutes are taken up by scenes of the characters having tense but humorous conversations with each other... which I suppose is true to the game, since players have to talk to each other to figure out which of them is the werewolf.
Werewolves Within is a good time and is absolutely worth checking out, but go into it for the laughs, not the werewolf.
The Werewolves Within review originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com
FEAR STREET PART 1: 1994 (2021)
R.L. Stine began writing the books in his young adult horror series Fear Street in 1989, so I can't understand how I missed out on those when I was a youngster consuming all the horror I could get my hands on. I skipped his Goosebumps books in the '90s because I wanted my horror to be a bit more grown up than that (even though I wasn't a grown up myself), but the teen-centric Fear Street books sound like they would have been what I was looking for. But I never read a single Fear Street book. So I any references to the source material that may be in the Fear Street film trilogy released through Netflix are lost on me. I can only evaluate them based on what's on the screen, and I enjoyed what I saw in Fear Street Part 1: 1994.
Directed by Leigh Janiak from a screenplay she wrote with Phil Graziadei (they also get story credit alongside Kyle Killen), the film instantly appealed to me through the fact that it's both a supernatural slasher and a period piece. The opening scene is quite reminiscent of something you'd see in a Scream movie, and ends with a rising star (Maya Hawke) being taken out of the picture before her credit even appears on screen. The Ghostface-esque slasher that gets her, called Skull Mask for obvious reasons, also doesn't make it out of the opening sequence alive - but that's not the last we'll see of him. Like I said, there's something supernatural going on here. In the town where this takes place, Shadyside, there's been something supernatural going on for hundreds of years, resulting in a whole lot of murders occurring on a regular basis.
Soon ghostly versions of Skull Mask (Noah Garrett) and other killers from Shadyside's past - the axe-wielding Camp Nightwing Killer (Lloyd Pitts) from 1978 and the singing, razor-slashing Ruby Lane (Jordyn DiNatale) from 1965 - are pursuing a group of teens all around their hometown. At the center of the story are our heroine Deena (Kiana Madeira), who was focused on the complicated relationship she has with Sam (Olivia Scott Welch) before all this murder and mayhem started; Deena's brother Josh (Benjamin Flores Jr.), who is already an internet regular in '94, four years before I ever had a connection; Deena's friend / Josh's crush Kate (Julia Rehwald); and Kate's buddy Simon (Fred Hechinger), who she has a drug-dealing set-up with. The teens are able to deduce that these slashers are coming after them because Sam has accidentally caught the attention of Sarah Fier (Elizabeth Scopel), the legendary witch who is responsible for the murders that have been plaguing Shadyside for so long, since the killers have all been under her influence. How do they get the witch and the killers she's controlling to stop focusing on Sam? Well, that's the issue they spend the film trying to resolve - and trying to survive.
1994 has its share of logic issues and moments that will have you questioning the intelligence of its characters, but I had a good time watching it and liked most of the characters. Really, the only one I was ready to see get knocked off was Simon, as there was only so much of his particular brand of quirk that I could take. He was dumb and weird and, you know, selling pharmaceuticals to kids. So was Kate, but at least she wasn't so dumb or weird. I was kind of conflicted when the group would get attacked; I didn't want them to get killed because I liked them, but at the same time I wanted some of them to get killed because that's what I watch a slasher to see. There is a cool kill in here that reminded me of the classic Intruder, and there's enough happening in the movie that I never stopped to think of the fact that there really aren't very many kills in it.
There are a ton of songs in it, though. There are moments when it even feels like Janiak is going overboard with the songs, but some of them are used for a purpose, and they are a good selection of songs from the time. The soundtrack is the most '90s thing about the film. Even though it's set in '94, there isn't a lot in here that couldn't pass for present day. It's just short on cell phones.
The soundtrack is cool, and so is the visual style. Caleb Heymann's cinematography looks great, and frequently has the scenes soaked in colorful lighting, which is something I always appreciate.
If this movie had been made on its own and we'd be left waiting to see how successful it was before knowing whether or not a sequel would be made, the ending would have been a little unsatisfying, since the door is left so wide open for a sequel that "To Be Continued" comes up on the screen - but I have seen standalone movies that left the audience hanging more than this one does. Thankfully, it's not an issue at all, because all three Fear Street movies were made back-to-back-to-back, so you know you can dive right into the sequels to see things get resolved.
MALIGNANT (2021)
Director James Wan has described his bugnuts slasher Malignant as his take on movies like the 1978 "American giallo" Eyes of Laura Mars, where Faye Dunaway plays a character who is able to see from the perspective of a killer when they're committing their murders. There is some of that to Malignant, and there was also an unexpected touch of Basket Case to the story Wan and co-conspirators Akela Cooper and Ingrid Bisu crafted here, which I greatly appreciated. (I wrote about Basket Case HERE and also wrote the script for a video about it that you can watch HERE.)
Annabelle Wallis of the Wan-produced Annabelle stars in Malignant as Madison, a woman with a mysterious past that involves adoption that was kept secret from her adoptive sister Sydney (Maddie Hasson), a stay in a research hospital, and an imaginary friend she referred to as the Devil - but is actually named Gabriel. Madison had blocked Gabriel from her blind, but the memories come flooding back when this "imaginary friend" re-enters her life and starts picking off people around the city she lives in, specifically targeting doctors from that research hospital.
The truth of what's going on with Madison and Gabriel is really wild, which is part of what has made Malignant a surprisingly divisive movie among horror fans. Some viewers weren't on board for this film's brand of insanity - but for me, the crazier it got, the more I enjoyed it. Thinking back on the movie after watching it, I liked it even more than I did while it was on in front of me because I started to appreciate more and more how wacky Wan had gotten with this story. Malignant is pretty dopey at times - this is a movie where a character can break into a massive abandoned hospital after dark and find the files she's looking for very quickly and easily, and that's nothing compared to the reality of Gabriel - but that's part of its charm. It's dumb, it's crazy, it has a cover of Pixies' "Where Is My Mind?" masquerading as score, and it all adds up to something that's kind of awesome... more so in the second half than in the first.
Titled Skull: A Máscara de Anhangá in its native Brazilian Portuguese, this film from the writing and directing duo of Armando Fonseca and Kapel Furman has been released in English-speaking countries as Skull: The Mask, which sounds odd because it cuts things short. It's the Mask of Anhangá, and I guess they didn't want to challenge English speakers too much by including Anhangá in the title, even though Skull: The Mask of Anhangá sounds much better.
Regardless of the title, this is an intriguing take on the slasher sub-genre. It begins with an action sequence, and thus starts winning me over right away, in which a masked man infiltrates a military base hidden in the Amazon and smashes his way through the soldiers in an effort to retrieve the mask of the title. This mask is said to have belonged to Anhangá, "the executioner of Tahawantinsupay", an ancient god. My assumption was that this guy was trying to keep the mask out of the wrong hands, but when he takes it back to his boss we see it being used in an experiment that involves a man being disemboweled and his bloody guts poured over the skull-like mask. So his hands may have been the wrong hands. The mask reacts to the blood, and when a man excitedly puts it on, his head explodes. It's quite an opening.
Jump ahead more than seventy years. The mask resurfaces and is acquired by Galvani (Guta Ruiz), who works for a wealthy museum owner (Ivo Müller as Tack Waelder) that has been abducting children and holding them captive for some reason. Before Bianca can deliver the mask to the museum, her girlfriend Lilah (Greta Antoine) can't resist making her own little blood offering to the mask, a decision that not only leads to disaster for the two women, but also leads to the mask possessing a cleaning technician who has work to do in Bianca's home after it becomes a crime scene. Now a masked, blade-wielding slasher played by Rurik Jr. has been set loose in the streets of São Paulo, on a mission to murder people and tear out their hearts to offer to his god Tahaw. Not only does he murder people he finds having sex, as slashers do, but the city setting also gives him the opportunity to wipe out some gang members and people in a nightclub. It's sort of like Jason Takes São Paulo. Rurik Jr. works primarily as a professional wrestler, and yeah, you can see that in the way he handles some of Skull's victims.
As Skull racks up a large body count, getting bloodier, slimier, and more disgusting as the film goes on, only a few characters step up to give him a challenge. There's Beatriz Obdias (Natallia Rodrigues, sometimes resembling Scarlett Johansson, sometimes resembling Kari Wuhrer), a police officer with a troubled past (and since she looks like Johansson, it's fitting that her character has "red on her ledger"), plus Manco Ramirez (Wilton Andrade) and Padre Vasco Magno (Ricardo Gelli), men who know the history of Anhangá. One is a believer, and the other is not. There is a bit of ass-kicking for the Lord, to give a nod to Dead-Alive, but the introduction of a flamethrower that wasn't used to its full potential was a tease. It's understandable, fire stunts are extremely difficult to pull off, but don't show a flamethrower unless the villain is actually going to be engulfed in flames. At least there's an explosion.
Skull: The Mask is a deeply strange movie that has a lot of plot going on, more than you usually see or need in a slasher, but it's a fun ride, and I'm really happy to see a slasher come out of Brazil. The country needs more of these - so hopefully we'll see Skull come back to make a mess of more people in some sequels.
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