Werewolf by Night Review
As far as Marvel works go this doesn’t really do that bad of a job in any category. In fact Mr. Bernal does a much better job in the title roll than Benicio Del Toro did in 2010, that’s for sure. It just mostly feels like not only an homage to classic horror movies but specifically ones that came out a decade after 2011’s The Artist takes place. I guess it would make more sense if I judged it as a normal movie and then a horror movie separately, despite sometimes going hand in hand to work from one another. It’s going to feel tricky yet I’ll try anyway. As a movie on its own this was brilliant. From the production design in the maze to the quick little twist concerning the connection with the monster and Bernal’s character makes it unlike most Marvel related works. Just the fact they nearly went for a more diet albeit noticeable approach in Elias Merhige’s method of filming by as far as adding old film splotches sometimes to give it age added gravitas to the aesthetic. The reverse homage to The Wizard of Oz did sort of take me out of the Sin City feel I got (particularly due to the bloodstone), yet the vibe I got from its early 70s-like visuals instead was still welcoming. There was effort and then some in that department. As a horror movie it’s simply good, not excellent but nevertheless above average. One thing it certainly aimed to do is bridge the gap between a hard PG-13 and an R Rating with the TV-14 death scenes (the kind of gap that lead to the creation of the same PG-13 rating in the 80s). Its strongest links as a horror were specifically the scenes with the corpse puppet at the start and the werewolf transformation, the latter which aimed for inventively stylized rather than remarkable by most standards. Plus the music gets fairly atmospheric once the hunt began, as do the scares when they really take off. I suppose what made it a few stars away from being excellent in this genre were minor aspects from the fact the monster Ted’s design shows this still wants to remind everyone this is a Marvel film (even as his form of taking opponents down is still quite extreme), as well as making the deaths as overly grotesque as possible without flirting (too much) with a TV-MA rating. It’s still not a bad horror movie, I just felt that even Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness did it better despite only flirting with the genre enough to merely claim elements from it. Yet by simply incorporating elements it managed to have them flow with the story naturally until it became its own type of horror movie despite choosing not to adopt that genre. Though what Werewolf by Night does was expertly crafted and fun eitherway. Just remember it’s still Marvel doing its darnest to work in its high-quality DNA into something horror related despite taking little more than that same risk or two.