Friday, May 21, 2010

BIG BAD WOLF (a review)


Yes, I like monster movies and it can be tough to find a decent one. Mybe because of the success fo TWILIGHT finally people are chugging out monster movies again. Here's film from 2006, before the TW-craze started and it's actually a pretty fun little flick with a bit of werewolf and a bit of Little Red Riding Hood.
The story? A kid steals the keys to his father-in-laws cabin so he and his frat brothers (who actually look down on the kid) can go party. Except once they are there and having fun they are attacked and four of the six are killed by a werewolf. The boy and his girl-friend (who is not his girlfriend) survive. They lie to the police (who wouldn't believe them). Then they begin to suspect that the boy's father in law is the werewolf. A friend of the boy's father agrees. He also thinks the father-in-law killed his father. They try to get DNA to test, but once they get confirmation the friend is killed and the boy and his girl-friend head back to the cabin where they, with a group of teen reporters, will confront the father-in-law/werewolf one final time.
Okay, so this was a fun little monster movie. I say monster movie and not horror movie because there wasn't really anything scary in it. The open segment where the boy goes to the cabin with the frat guys and is attacked is predictable, but done with a light, fun touch that you want in these kinds of movies. The second act -- where they try to find out if the father-in-law is the werewolf has some good stuff too. They find nice little twists that make it all fun. For instance, they send the DNA off and get the results, but the father-in-law steals form the delivery man, so now they have to steal the results back from him. It's a nice little twist that makes that section fun.
This movie has an usual problem for the low budget movie -- they try to do too much. There are a lot of elements to the movie, fom the boy and the girl-friend, to the relationship with the father-in-law, to the teen reporters, to the revelation that the father-in-law killed the boy's father...and while I can see why they had each element, they don't really come together as a whole so the movie feels scattered and schizophrenic, with the first and third acts feeling totally different than the second. It's not a big deal if you just want a bit of a fun movie, but it definitely makes it feel more like schlock instead of being a genuinely good little film.
But it was fun.
*** RECOMMEND (as a monster movie) ***

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