WEREWOLF: THE BEAST AMONG US
"When a mysterious creature terrorizes a village by moonlight, a local young man joins a group of werewolf hunters to bring it down."
It seems after 2010's The Wolfman failed to set the box office on fire, Universal Studios still had werewolf fever, so they greenlit a direct-to-video project that had essentially no connection to either the 2010 film or the classic 1941 The Wolf Man, aside from a random recitation of the famous rhyme invented by screenwriter Curt Siodmak:
"Even a man who is pure of heart,
And says his prayers by night,
May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
And the autumn moon is bright."
The story follows a werewolf hunter played by some guy with a beard who was on that SyFy show Eureka for a few years as he and his posse hunt a particularly crafty beast in an isolated village somewhere in... I have no idea. Some of the villagers have vague "European" accents, some sound like they're from the USA, and a lot of them are just straight-up Mexicans. Where is this place? When is this place? Nobody ever said anything.
IMDB says the movie was shot in Romania, and that the inclusion of a certain rifle suggests the story takes place sometime after the year 1891. Does that answer my questions? More importantly, do I care?
Stephen Rea is in this movie, sleepwalking through yet another performance as the village doctor, and you know he's the villain as soon as he appears onscreen. It's just lazy casting.
His apprentice is a young man who wants to join the hunt for the killer beast that is terrorizing the village, but that might be a little difficult, considering he actually is the werewolf that is terrorizing the village. But he doesn't know this until he just figures it out because the plot reaches a point where he needs to know in order to move forward.
One of the grizzled werewolf hunter's companions becomes a secondary villain during the film's third act, I suppose because the screenwriters had no idea how to actually conclude their own story. This guy just arbitrarily decides he wants to fuck the werewolf boy's girlfriend, and he turns into a mustache-twirling bad guy, and also a vampire.
Yes, he's a vampire, too. Why? Beats the fuck out of me! Earlier on in the movie, it's shown that people who survive a werewolf bite are doomed to transform into undead fiends called wurdulac, rather than becoming werewolves themselves. But later on, the werewolf hunters are surprised to learn that the beast they're hunting was a natural-born werewolf and not somebody who had been turned involuntarily. So how do people become werewolves in this universe?
And what is a wurdulac? In Russian folklore, a wurdulac is a vampire that is explicitly driven to feed on its family, transforming them into wurdulac in the process. They are not made via werewolf bite. And in the film, every other wurdulac we see is a mindless monster, but our villain is a cunning and intelligent adversary who has hunted werewolves for over a century simply because he's bored and likes the sport. This movie's mythology is all over the place.
Stephen Bauer is entertaining in a supporting role as another member of the werewolf hunting party. He has a habit of getting drunk in taverns full of strangers and telling stories of his adventures. One of his colorful tales involves his horse getting mutilated by a werewolf, losing its rear legs. He boasted that instead of euthanizing his beloved horse, he strapped a pair of wagon wheels to its hindquarters, and I was surprised to later discover that he was telling the truth! Throughout the movie, Bauer is indeed riding atop a horse with wagon wheels for hind legs.
That's about all I enjoyed about Werewolf: The Beast Among Us. This movie is, top to bottom, disposable trash. Aside from the boisterous personality of Stephen Bauer, none of the actors manage to craft anything memorable out of what the pathetic script gives them. The damned movie's too stupid to keep its own internal mythology straight, let alone provide anything meaningful or even mildly interesting.
The plot indulges in a series of ridiculous third act twists because nobody was interested in attempting to make a compelling, dramatic narrative. That's too much work! Just throw a bunch of shit at the wall and see what sticks! Stock characters! Twist! Double-cross! Jump scare! Jump scare! JUMP SCARE! That's the way we get things done here in Whogivesafuckistan!
You suck, Werewolf: The Beast Among Us!
YOUR TIME IS RUNNING OUT!
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