DarkWolf

Synopsis : A new breed of horror roams the streets of Los Angeles. It's the Darkwolf, a vicious werewolf with a thirst for blood ~ and a lust for Josie, a sexy, unsuspecting woman with a mysterious power she in only beginning to understand. once the Darkwolf catches Josie's scent, nothing can stop his insatiable hunger to mate with her....and he'll kill anyone who gets in the way!!

Overview : This movie did have some potential but it was lost somewhere along the way. The movie did move smoothly from beginning to end and the story was decent, but the acting suffered and the special effects weren't very special at all. The transformation scenes from human to wolf made me feel I just jumped into an XBOX game as I looked around for my controller. I did enjoy the few scenes were we SEE the wolf and the leftovers it strew behind him but that alone wasn't strong enough to hold this movie together.

Jekyll's Rating : Some people are fans when it comes to the direct to video movies...I suppose I am not one of them. This one gets a 2 star rating from me....get it as cheap as possible if you must.

Greetings

This is my first review of a movie on this site, and this movie was so bad, I feel I have to rant somewhere.

Oh my word this movie is bad. I got together with eight of my friends and we watched it together. It was in the first scene that the first MST3K comment was uttered... after that, you just could not stop. I am sure we missed a lot of the very important plot points (like what the difference between pure bred werewolves and half breed werewolves were).

There were soooooo many plot holes and bad plot devices used that I will definitely go over the 1000 word limit if I were to name only half of them.

Not even the nudity could save this movie.

However, saying all of that, I loved watching this movie. Why? Because I was rolling around on the floor laughing at both the actual plot and what my friends were saying to the screen. The ending has to be seen to be believed. It was a hoot to watch. We ripped the movie to shreds and had a great time doing it.

You can't watch this movie alone, but with a bunch of your friends who are willing to make comments, it can be great fun.

Hip. Erotic. Wickedly sexy ... whatever. It's "The Terminator" with werewolves.

No, seriously. The cop saves the girl (waitress!) from the big monster and refers to himself as her 'protector'. The lead actor Ryan Alosio does a pretty good job of emulating Kyle Reese ... there's a massacre in a police precinct ... the bad guy is muscular with red eyes ... and it even contains dialogue along the lines of "You said it yourself, he won't ever stop. Never." The dire script comes from a first-time screenwriter who, thank God, hasn't sold anything since this, and it's all thrown together by famously bad director Richard Friedman.

The movie opens in a strip bar (always a good sign), and a mean-looking biker guy bursts in for no apparent reason, pursued by three cops. One of them is black, and (shock horror!) he's the one who gets killed in the first five minutes. The film goes downhill for the next hour or so, then picks up a little with some decent action sequences, before rounding it all up with an abysmal ending.

For the most part, the cast come across as competent actors doing what they can with a bad script and a director who's willing to settle for less. If nothing else they appear to be learning how to act in this movie and Alosio, along with some of the supporting cast, shows signs of talent. DarkWolf in his human form is played by gargantuan Kane Hodder -- famous for his numerous portrayals of Jason Vorhees in the 'Friday the 13th' movies. He's decent enough, especially considering he isn't used to speaking roles.

It's become famous amongst groups of horny teenage boys for the lesbian rooftop scene between Andrea Bogart and Sasha Williams, who gets her kit off a couple of times in the grand tradition of former 'Power Rangers' actresses. And it's unnervingly clear that the editor spent WAY too much time on that scene ... anyway, the main redeeming feature is that the physical werewolf effects are rather good, and the design of the wolf isn't bad at all.But the CGI is bad. Just plain bad. I mean seriously, if you can't reach some level of realism - why bother? Just throw a little extra money into the make-up! Aside from the terrible script, this movie does have it's moments, many of which are unintentionally funny. It's good for a laugh if you don't have anything better to do, but just don't spend any money on it. Please.

The opening titles took me by surprise. I knew Kane was in this film, but Tippi? The Tippi Hedren from Alfred Hitchcock's classic the Birds and underrated Marnie? Huh. Well, that is the highlight of the film, and the only pleasant surprise the film has up its sleeve.

What's kind of sad is the general premise of Dark Wolf could work well were it not written on the level of forth grade flunkies. The usage of color, lighting and camera work are above your typical bad-horror flick, and with a complete narrative overhaul and redistribution of the budget (cutting out the CG) it could go somewhere.

The two biggest weaknesses in this film are its CG usage and the low-level intelligence of the script. On the commentary track for Exorcist: Beginning, Renny Harlin observes that a horror film's effectiveness thrives upon the reality of its world – a reality that CG shatters. Dark Wolf proves him correct – watch the werewolf transformations in this movie. Transformation that look like a video game cut scene integrated into a live action film. Watch it and try not to laugh. Just try.

CG, done correctly, carries a pretty steep price tag, especially if the said scene involves a computer generated character. The reality of such effects rests within dozens upon dozens upon dozens of subtle details that the casual viewer cannot consciously identify, but even Joe-nobody off the street knows when its lacking. When the effect is artificial. I have a hard enough time suspending my disbelief for the likes of Star Wars II and Matrix: Reloaded whose team of CG artists outnumber Dark Wolf's cast and crew combined. Low budget horror shouldn't even screw with it.

The second biggest weakness, again, is the script's intelligence level. And yes, I'm aware of the genre's average film IQ. This film scored in the double digits on the specialized dumbed down horror SATs. If you marveled at the moron who drove miles out of his way to accidentally dig up and revive Jason in F13pt6, prepare to meet his mentor, grasshopper. "What's with the shiny guns?" asks a cop to an FBI agent, and I expected her to finish with "They're pretty!" Movies like this make me re-evaluate my expectations for horror, but I find myself asking "how can my expectations get any lower?" I absolutely loved a film as narratively retarded featuring shallow throwaway characters – and that movie's name? Freddy Versus Jason. I'm not looking for strong character convictions here, but convince me your cop has at least heard of Miranda for Christ's sake. Convince me the photographer knows something about photography. Convince me that the werewolves are actually a threat – a werewolf attacks and we can read a book then just plop the wolf up and carry it around like a bag of groceries? Sounds like a SNL skit.

Before too long, I found it more entertaining challenging the logic and questioning the events of the film than accepting the film's reality. For example, how do you lose the one relic that will ultimately explain everything and save the world? How does someone stand there and watch the heroine escape and lose her when his sole purpose in life is to locate her? Why did the wolf look eerily like an ape? Why is a naked Kane Hodder laughably unintimidating as he demands "Where is she?" Why does he go to wolf form before every kill? and why is he mysteriously naked for one scene in the middle of the film? I know better than asking these questions, but I couldn't help myself. Dark Wolf was asking—nay, begging—for it.

Winding down, the film shows Kane Hodder on a morgue table, and that's where I switched off the film. Anyone who's seen even one horror movie knows exactly what will happen, and as I ejected the DVD and returned it to its case I quietly noted how much of Dark Wolf I could have skipped and still know precisely the events that take place. In fact, the only thing I would have missed was the below average stupidity and the six minute MTVesque photo-shoot of some girls made up as werewolves.

On the plus side the film does have Tippi Hedren. It also has better than average camera work, a very colorful (though frequently inappropriate) atmosphere, and a few cool effects like the flash of red to wolf's perspective . . . before it became redundant . . . which was before it became obnoxious. Overall, though, the only way I can recommend Dark Wolf is to demonstrate why low budget horror should stay away from computer generated imagery.

This move was on TV last night. I guess as a time filler, because it sucked bad! The movie is just an excuse to show some tits and ass at the start and somewhere about half way. (Not bad tits and ass though). But the story is too ridiculous for words. The "wolf", if that is what you can call it, is hardly shown fully save his teeth. When it is fully in view, you can clearly see they had some interns working on the CGI, because the wolf runs like he's running in a treadmill, and the CGI fur looks like it's been waxed, all shiny :)

The movie is full of gore and blood, and you can easily spot who is going to get killed/slashed/eaten next. Even if you like these kind of splatter movies you will be disappointed, they didn't do a good job at it.

Don't even get me started on the actors... Very corny lines and the girls scream at everything about every 5 seconds. But then again, if someone asked me to do bad acting just to give me a few bucks, then hey, where do I sign up?

Overall boring and laughable horror.