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What’s in a name? A lot, when it comes to movies, at least. Classics of the genre often have descriptive titles, like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which tells you everything you need to know about what’s going to go down. But, a great title can do more than simply describe a plot, it can offer an intriguing invitation into a new world, like with The Matrix, with it’s guiding question of ‘What Is The Matrix?’ The opposite is also true, a bad or even just bland title can sink a movie before it had a chance to shine, which is only one of the many problems that the generically titled ‘Werewolves’ has.

Werewolves’ story starts a full year before the movie itself, because the prelude to Werewolves reveals that one year ago, a ‘supermoon’ event released celestial rays that awakened the latent werewolf genes in everyone on Earth who was struck by moonlight, causing a massive death toll as Earth was swarmed by the monsters. A year later, a scientist, played by the comically miscast Frank Grillo, joins a group to test the miracle salve ‘moonscreen’ which is supposed block the effects of the ‘supermoon’ and prevent the werewolf transformations. You can guess how well that goes. After werewolves overrun America, again, Grillo needs to get home quickly because his late brother’s wife and child are being menaced by werewolves in a house that he set up a bunch of traps in to try to protect them from the werewolf menace. 

If you can’t tell already, let me spell it out for you, this plot is absolutely horrible, and is the entire reason that the rest of the movie fails completely. I can forgive the nonsense of the premise, because who doesn’t want to see a movie with a bunch of werewolves, and it’s the rest of the nonsense that bogs everything down. When Werewolves opened with a sweaty Frank Grillo setting up death traps in his front yard, like if the Purge and Home Alone fused into one movie, I was kind of excited. Home invasion movies can be fun, especially when you involve monsters and booby traps and all that stuff, which is why I was so confused when Grillo immediately leaves the family he loves to go test ‘moonscreen’. You already have your premise, Frank Grillo fights werewolves to defend his family, why bother with another premise on top of that?

The opening had me interested, but the sequence directly afterwards squashed any hope that I had for a decent movie. At a secret big pharma lab, subjects are brought in to test the ‘moonscreen’ by slathering them up in this stuff and then exposing them to ‘supermoonlight’. This works for a few hours but inevitably they all begin to turn and then a werewolf throws a ‘moonscreen’ sprayer, causing everything to explode and all the cages to open. Seriously. One werewolf throws one thing and the entire paramilitary site collapses like a deck of cards in one of the least believable scenes in all of fiction. After that all fails, Frank Grillo realizes he needs to get home to protect his family. Really the entire point of the ‘moonscreen’ plot was to explain how Frank Grillo and his science partner can be walking outside unmasked and avoid transforming.

While I was expecting a lot of this to be schlocky, I wasn’t prepared for how boring it would all be. Very little happens aside from Frank Grillo walking a lot and trying to avoid werewolves who seem much less good at hearing/seeing/smelling than even the average person would be. The occasional cuts back to the house are extremely repetitive, showing mother and daughter reacting over and over to the same news that, yes, werewolves are still out there. I don’t want to be down on these actors too much, they’re doing the best they can with what they have, but this script is just atrocious. Nothing makes sense, nothing matters except the first and last scenes, and you can see everything coming from a mile away.

The issue, more than anything else, is that Werewolves is just dumb. Almost every scene includes something that makes no sense and leaves you thinking “That’s not how that works”, which breaks any immersion or emotional connection you may inadvertently form with the plot or characters. This is even more heavily reinforced by the inclusion of countless pointless scenes that don’t show you anything interesting or build to anything, they just exist to pad time. If you have to wonder “what was the point of that scene?” after every sequence, then you know there’s a massive problem. 

Now, I will discuss the positives of Werewolves. It’s clear that most of the budget for Werewolves went to the creature effects and that was a good call! They’re old school practical effects creatures that were well done, especially at this budget. If you’re a gorehound, there is a fair bit of ultraviolence that, while not in service of much, is gnarly enough to scratch some primal itch. Man, I am wracking my brain here but I cannot think of anything else I could say about this  

I wish Werewolves wasn’t so bad. Schlocky silly movies are one of my great pleasures, and I was hoping that this was going to be this generation’s The Howling II: Your Sister Is A Werewolf. If Werewolves had more energy, fewer unnecessary scenes, more reasonable casting choices, it would have had a chance to be a fun creature feature. As it stands, this is just another entry into the pile of generic horror flicks. So sad, better luck next time.