Rating: C-
Dir: David Hayter.
Star: Lucas Till, Stephen McHattie, Merritt Patterson, Jason Momoa.
“Twilight with werewolves” might be a facile oversimplification of this. But it’s not exactly wrong. It offers the same mix of horror and romance, in a world where everyone is ruggedly handsome, and sports a plaid shirt. So. Many. Plaid. Shirts. Cayden Richards (Till) is a high-school quarterback, dating a cheerleader – the whole nine yards. Except he has a bit of an anger issue, turning wolfy when he does. After his adopted parents turn up dead, he hits the road, ending up in the werewolf community of Lupine Ridge. There’s a power struggle between the “domesticated” lycanthropes under John Tollerman (McHattie) and the wild boys of Connor Slaughter (Momoa, back between being Khal Drogo and Aquaman).
There’s a plan for peace which involves Angel Timmins (Patterson) becoming Slaughter’s literal bitch and giving him a son to continue the lineage. But she doesn’t want to, and it’s up to Cayden to come to terms with his own history. Which involves a rather closer relationship to Conner than is comfortable for anyone. His presence in the community turns out to be anything but an accident either. None of which comes as much of a surprise to the viewer, yet really seems to shock our hero. Mind you, he is stunned to realize a place called Lupine Ridge, which keeps to itself, isn’t an Amish retreat. This is the kind of film which feels like it’d be over in fifteen minutes, if only the hero was smart.
Hayter had an interesting path to the director’s chair for this, his debut feature. He was the voice of Solid Snake in the Metal Gear Solid franchise played the Guyver in the second live-action adaptation, and wrote the screenplay for Watchmen. But it feels like he struggles with more than basic story-telling here, and its dismal box-office results likely were a factor in being his only movie directed to date. It doesn’t help that the supporting cast is stronger than Till, who brings little to his role except a floppy haircut. McHattie is value as ever, and Momoa’s undeniable screen presence is… um, present, albeit under lycan eyeliner. We also get to see Melanie Scrofano in a pre-Wynonna Earp performance.
This begins feeling as if it might be trying to sell lycanthropy as a metaphor for puberty. However, after about ten minutes, it realizes that Ginger Snaps already exists. The film then becomes a hairy version of The Incredible Hulk for a bit, before settling into the Twilight mode mentioned earlier: a shirts-optional love triangle with supernatural overtones. Despite turning up a couple of years too late for that bandwagon, it’s less specifically irritating, and on odd occasions you can see the goal for which Hayter was aiming. The effects are a mixed bag. At some points, they work well enough; at others they appear to have strayed in from an abandoned live-action version of Thundercats. Mostly, though, it’s a demonstration of why Momoa went on to stardom, and Till did not.