I love the idea of taking werewolves up a notch and giving us an army of dog soldiers on the attack. I’m not the first person to note it’s like The Purge with werewolves (Frank Grillo said it in an interview and he knows his B movies). Unfortunately a combination of an obvious low budget and a deeply, deeply stupid script sabotaged the movie.

Werewolves is about a global pandemic of lycanthropy due to a Super Moon that infected millions of people. Society is now on the ragged edge from all the werewolves and tonight is the next Super Moon. Can Frank Grillo (molecular biologist) enact a cure or will the werewolves overwhelm the streets with their army of three or four beasts?

To get it out in the open, if you are far far less judgy than me over your B movie horror flicks, you might look right past all the many problems this film has. I can see a way to it being just a good natured creature feature/werewolf attack movie. It’s there on screen… but sadly not in the edit, script, acting, or smarts.

The film is just a ramshackle mess of bad logic… inconsistent werewolf rules, bad character choices, bad acting, and very rough action scene editing and continuity. Almost nothing works, especially its bad werewolf rules. I kept saying “but wait a minute” every time the stupid script made a shortcut or inconsistency in the basic premise.

The acting is a little rough, especially with one of the female leads who can’t convincingly act scared, assured, or bad-ass to save her life. Frank Grillo is fine, having been born to play a molecular biologist but never getting the chance. And, to be fair, good for him for get a starring role in a theatrical release… though why this movie got a theatrical release is confounding and confusing.

The werewolves use CGI transformations but seem mostly to be men in furry costumes and animatronic heads otherwise. Facing the camera, they look pretty cool. In profile, they are embarrassingly dorky. Their snouts are way too thin and they have a noticeable underbite. While ultimately disappointing, I give them credit for their instinct to go practical.

Hey – didn’t that lady say she didn’t have any shotgun shells left? And then she reloads her shotgun three scenes later? Yes, it’s “I think there’s problems in this movie: the movie”. But maybe its dedication to being a straight-up B movie might be enough to win you over. My brain got in the way. I didn’t like it.

Score: 58