It’s always fun to see a new B movie. Low budget genre pictures are intriguing from any era, and I am happy that many modern filmmakers have found outlets for smaller movies, especially in the age of the Marvel Universe Expandathon. Sometimes it’s fun just to watch a movie retreat from and push against its technical limitations. Writer/director/producer David Hayter, a man who made a name for himself in summer tent poles as a screenwriter, has stretched his small-scale wings with a new movie, simply called Wolves, and he might have stretched them equally too far, and not far enough.
Cayden Richards (Lucas Till) is living the ultimate, if ultimately uninteresting, high school highlife. He is popular, dating a beautiful girl, and is captain of the football team. When we enter his life, he is going through some changes. Some of them are coming of age, but most of them are coming of wolfman. After his parents wind up dead on a night of uncontrollable wolfy death-lust, he skips town in an effort to escape his trouble. Not only does his trouble show up everywhere he thinks he is safe, but it often shows up in the form of more trouble. Eventually, he takes a job as a farmhand for a kind man who lives in a town completely populated by wolf-people. Don’t blame Cayden for this somewhat ironic booboo. He really had no idea. King of Wolf-People Town is Connor (Jason Momoa), and for reasons I won’t disclose at this time for the sake of potential viewers, he doesn’t want Cayden around.
I probably sound like I’m not taking any of this seriously, but why would I? None of this is supposed to be enjoyed on any level higher than the variety of violent, pulpy, semi-trash being served. I did have a good time watching it, and although the story beats are familiar and predictable, enough of them pop up within the film’s brief 90 minutes to prevent just about anyone from skipping out early. That’s the part that really surprises me, though. This is the guy who wrote (or was the only writer lucky enough to be credited on) X-Men, X2: X-Men United, and Watchmen. Those are not necessarily stellar flicks, but they each display a palpable amount of narrative ingenuity. He seems to be playing it awfully safe here.
On the other hand, he takes too many risks with his visuals. He didn’t even have the budget to make Lucas Till look like he can actually ride a motorcycle. His hair whips about in front of a poorly rendered green screen in a number of cringe-worthy shots. Not to be outdone by digital effects, the practical make-up on our wolf friends also makes for a difficult watch. This is a gang of violent critters in a movie deserving of its R-rating, but its hard not to look at these guys and… find them kinda cute. There is something about the roundness of the faces and the human head-hair remaining unaltered after wolf transformation that prevents a moment of this thing from being even slightly frightening. Even the fight sequences fail to stir much of a response. When October rolls around, you might want to pop this in just for the sake of seeing a new werewolf movie, but otherwise, we can only hope Hayter can still make it happen in the big leagues.
