Wolf Hollow

An indie film crew has descended upon rural Pennsylvania following their local scout to his family's property. The scout has been estranged from his family for an unknown reason. The local area is being hounded by animalistic terror.

The acting is mostly amateurish. The production is not much better. I actually like the opening five minutes. The rural biker lowlife party brings out the right vibe and I really like the unrestraint gore. It's good indie fun. Once the gore stops, the movie struggles. It tries to have some fun with diva Marla Taylor although she gets knocked off quite early. It falls a bit short.

It's a crowd-funded low-budget werewolf horror. And within those parameters it's pretty well done. The plot is straightforward and the performances are mostly fine. The creature designs are effective and they're reminiscent of the hulking anthropomorphized wolves from Dog Soldiers - if it ain't broke don't fix it. The gore and action are competently staged. The downside, aside from the constraints of the budget, is the attempted humor. It's sparsely utilized and it generally falls flat, especially strange and dated references to the show $chitt's Creek.

I'll add that as proud denizen of Pennsyltucky I found the accents distracting. Yes, we are feral hillbillies; but no, we don't actually sound like we're from Kentucky or Alabama or whatever some of the actors were going for here.

I was initially lured in to watch the 2023 movie "Wolf Hollow" as it was a werewolf movie that I had already seen. And the movie's cover definitely did a fair job in making me stop up and pick up the movie. Without ever having heard about director Mark Cantu's 2023 movie, I didn't know what I was in for, aside from it being a werewolf movie, which essentially was all I needed to watch it.

Writers Mark Cantu and Brian Ceponis put together a script and storyline that wasn't particularly impressive. The movie starts out okay, but quickly settles into a slump from which the narrative never really recovers. And the movie advances at a sluggish pace, without much excitement or thrills.

The acting performances in the movie were fairly rigid for the most parts. There were some pretty awful performances, but also some fair enough among the actors and actresses. I've seen enough low budget horror movies to be familiar with Felissa Rose, whom happened to be the only familiar face on the screen.

The special effects in the movie were actually good, taking the rest of the movie into consideration. And truth be told, the special effects do actually carry the movie a long way. The werewolves, though, well they were inarticulate and looked nothing more than what they actually were; and that was Halloween latex masks. That just doesn't cut it, the werewolves should be able to close their mouths, which they couldn't do in this movie.

If you are a diehard fan of werewolf movies, then check out "Wolf Hollow". I do like werewolf movies, but the majority of them are subpar movies, and "Wolf Hollow" fell into that category for me.

My rating of director Mark Cantu's 2023 movie "Wolf Hollow" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.

I've seen lots of movies in my 56 years, but I have never seen one this awful. I barely made it past the opening credits. I have zero artistic talent of any kind, so I've never before said "I could have done better," when it comes to a movie. Unfortunately, this one actually made me say that out loud. The acting? There isn't any. It's just some amateurs wandering around making inane conversation. The writing? There isn't any. I'm convinced they just made it up as they went, and it wouldn't have mattered because the sound mixing is so bad you can't make out any of the "dialogue" anyway. The special effects? Well, that's pure Spirit Halloween store on a very low budget. Save yourself! I cannot imagine how this movie was even made, let alone released.

The few 10/10 reviews here are obviously from people involved with the film, related to people who are or were part of the crowd fund. It's not even close, not even in the horror genre alone, or even the werewolf genre. It's bad.

Good for the makers for getting their film made, but more time should have been spent on the script, especially the dialogue. Way too talky for it's own good.

The cinematography isn't great either, often finding the camera placement in awkward positions, giving a very messy feel to scenes.

I understand that it's a crowd funded film and had a very low budget, but the script should have been worked on a lot more and fine-tuned before deciding to green light the thing.

Like I said, congratulations to all involved on getting a film made. But next time, spend a helluva lot more time on the script, it's one of the most important aspects of any film.

Best of luck in the future.