Blood Moon (2015)
Matt Boiselle
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Starring Shaun Dooley, George Blagden, Jack Fox
Directed by Jeremy Wooding
While some new blood definitely needs to be shed in order to spruce up the tired old werewolf format of horror, why not stick em in the Old West? Funny thing is, it works pretty damn nicely! Beware the Blood Moon.
Director Jeremy Wooding takes the hairy savage lycanthrope and drops it smack in the middle of a western, complete with bank robberies, stagecoach rides, shootouts, and MAYBE even an occasional lady of the night (but only if you’re lucky). The movie blasts out of the gate with a brazen heist at a local bank by the Norton brothers, Jeb and Hank (Raffaello Degruttola, Corey Johnson) – they’re short-fused and now on the run from the law, and with only one dependable man for the job (Fox), he decides against his better judgement to enlist the help of an Indian woman known as Black Deer (Eleanor Matsuura), whose biggest problem is not knowing when to put the booze bottle down. This is going to be an interesting pursuit, for sure. Her assistance in the chase is dropping some knowledge about the “skinwalkers” who were kicked out of their tribe for practicing such black arts, and when the moon turns red, they come out to hunt.
Enter Calhoun (Dooley), a steely-eyed, bad-ass cowboy with a quick draw and even quicker wit – he and a full stagecoach of travelers are taken hostage by the Nortons and held up at a deserted saloon, and it’s not too long (actually it is) before we get some werewolf violence, front and center. The film is fun as much as it is goofy and staged, but the idea of a rampaging beast tearing through a western town is interesting to behold, aside from the hokey dialogue and LONG stretches of it, by the way. When the final third of the movie gets rolling, it’s completely off of its wagon wheels, and that’s when the fun really begins.
Gore? Not too much to speak of, but when there is some bloodshed, it’s admirable in both presentation and production – bodies are ripped in half, and throats are slashed with some decent arterial sprays. Now, the werewolf on the other hand… I’m not going to leap so far as to say the look was cheesy, but I think the notion of NOT showing the full costume for more than a few seconds at a time was a wise one indeed.
Dooley is fun to watch as the tough-guy cowboy with a sharp tongue, and the work of Degruttola and Johnson as the bank-robbing Nortons is equally entertaining, even if it looked at times as if they were reading out of the rootin-tootin cowboy handbook for a more effective old west image. Nonetheless, I could recommend this for those who want a nice twist on their wolf-watching, and regardless of the lack of style and substance with Blood Moon, it’s a howling good time. Jeez, that was bad – my apologies.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
