What’s in a name? This foursome of flicks features two movies about werewolves and two that reference a werewolf or wolves in their names but have nothing to do with hairy beasts. Either way, were any of them worth a watch? Let’s find out.
THE FOREST HILLS (2023)
This is one of those “is he or isn’t he really a werewolf” movies. It’s moody and messy, as it’s plagued by delusion, flashback, and daydream sequences, and we’re never really sure if any of it’s real. However, from a horror standpoint, these same sequences totally carry the film. They are freaky, gory, and violent.
In one of her last appearances, Shelley Duvall plays a woman dying of cancer…all the more reason for her iconic cigarette to make a fleeting cameo…
Before her death, Duvall reconnects with her estranged son Rico, who is a total mental case. He believes he is being targeted by a werewolf, so he hides out in a house in the woods, waiting to kill the beast when it comes for him.
This dude is so nuts that he kills anyone that shows up at the house, assuming they are the werewolf. There are also flashes of him disposing of bodies in grisly ways, which leaves us wondering if he’s actually a werewolf or just a serial killer.
If you’re a fan of horror cameos, we also get Dee Wallace briefly, Felissa Rose briefly, and Edward Furlong in a slightly larger role that plays a crucial part in Rico’s behavior and basically clears up everything Rico is going through. All I’ll say is that if you come to this movie specifically because you’re looking for a balls to the wall werewolf flick, you’ve come to the wrong place.
THE BEAST COMES AT MIDNIGHT (2023)
This playful flick unfolds like a typical teen movie—oddball geeks vs. popular kids—with a sub-story of werewolf attacks hovering in the background for a majority of the running time before finally hitting full-blast in a final act that is an absolute hoot. I’m glad I stuck with it to the end.
With both Eric Roberts and Michael Pare in the cast, I knew I was in for a SyFy original style flick…the very reason I watched it. Not surprisingly, Roberts’ appearance is brief, and it’s only at the beginning and end, but Pare actually gets a juicier role for a change, and his presence adds to the fun for the final battle.
So, there have been a rash of animal attacks in a town. A geek with an internet show about strange phenomena decides to launch his own investigation while dodging the harassment by more popular kids. Surprisingly, the bullying is quite light, and all of the characters are pretty likable.
Helping the geek with his detective work is a pretty girl who cozies up to him, Pare as the owner of a carnival sideshow museum, and a woman with an occult shop. However, there’s no real meat to this aspect of the film, and none of it is injected with much excitement.
Only slightly more exciting are the “attacks” sprinkled throughout the film. Unfortunately, they all consist of someone screaming and being dragged off screen. We never see anything, which is to the detriment of engaging us before we finally get to the finale.
The first werewolf transformation doesn’t hit until 70-minutes into this 86-minute movie, but once it does it is an old school werewolf costume bonanza.
Special effects king Joe Castro plays the werewolf, and he hunts down all the cast members when they end up at the sideshow museum. The stalking and battle between the main cast and the werewolf make for perfect midnight movie laughs. I just wish the film had brought this energy sooner.
WEREWOLF GAME (2025)
This is not a werewolf movie, but the one thing that could have saved it would have been for someone to actually have been a werewolf at the end.
I really thought it was going to go in a The Beast Must Die direction, but instead, it was more like a Saw movie. Yawn.
A group of people wakes up to find they’ve been abducted and brought to a deserted island, where someone in a mask tells them they must play the werewolf game—every day they must come together to vote on who they think the werewolf is, and the person they vote on gets killed.
The person in the mask is so obviously Tony Todd based on the voice (and the fact that he gets top billing), but he only takes off the mask during the finale. There are also some masked henchmen that help terrorize the group.
There’s no excitement here. The group spends their days talking about how they’re going to work together to escape, and their nights turning against each other as they decide who to vote out of the house like it’s some fatal version of Big Brother.
That’s it. That’s the movie. I didn’t care about the characters (except the shirtless hunk), I didn’t care about the plot. I just wanted someone to really fuck with everyone’s heads by totally transforming into a werewolf in the end.
RAISED BY WOLVES (2014)
This one has absolutely nothing to do with wolves or werewolves, but it was actually one of the most entertaining horror flicks in this foursome, combining found footage with an Evil Dead premise.
We learn about a Manson-like cult and mass murder on an Indian Reservation farm in the 1970s.
Next, we meet a group of skateboard friends, and they are all douchebags. Why do modern movies feel the need to make all their characters assholes?
They go on a road trip, end up at the house and barn where the cult lived, and about 40 minutes in they begin getting possessed and terrorizing each other.
There’s nothing deeper to the plot than that, and the found footage approach covers all the clichés, but that’s what makes it so much fun. It’s just simple possession spreading like an infection between friends, and sometimes that’s all you need.
