Werewolf: la bestia è tornata

In the Nineteenth Century, when a werewolf slaughters the dwellers of a small town, a group of bounty hunters commanded by Charles (Ed Quinn) arrive in town and negotiate a higher reward. The apprentice of medicine Daniel (Guy Wilson), who is the protégé of the local doctor (Stephen Rea), joins the group and provides information about the beast that is intelligent and kills not only on the full moon, but also on the previous and the next days. Soon the gypsy leader invites Charles and Daniel and explains that in the solstice, the wolf-like creature will be able to control his transformation at will. Therefore they have only two days to discover who the beast among them is and destroy it.

"Werewolf: The Beast among Us" is an underrated and entertaining adventure of werewolf and hunters where their leader Charles is a sort of "Van Helsing" of werewolves. The movie will never be awarded with Festival prizes but it is pretty decent and funny. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Lobisomem – A Besta Está entre Nós" ("Werewolf - The Beast among Us")

It wasn't great. I'm not even sure if it made good. But if you were looking for a cheap park your brain and have fun blood and guts violence movie with some Eastern European charm and don't mind utterly flawed props, this will do.

The cast is hardly sterling. We have Nathan Stark from Eureka in the lead. But that was good enough. In this land of Transylvania and cowboy hats, we have The Mysterious Vampire Hunter in a cowboy hat along with the macho chick and their sidekicks, going after the super bad ones.

It's obviously Romania from things like signs being in Romanian and the reward poster being in the Romanian money. (10,000 Lei) What's more out of place are the anachronisms in the firearms. The rifle the hunter carried was a round receivered Mosin Nagant rifle. They started producing them in 1930 and that gun looks like a post war II version. The revolver he carried was a post war Smith and Wesson. The Mauser rifles the gypsies had were K98's, which were from World War II.

Despite the historical stupidities and the iffy CGI, it was fun.

Nothing special, but more than a decent effort. Plus a few good actors are thrown into the mix. Stephen Rea being one of them. Acting is good overall. Nice make-up FX and nice story support that. There is not too much blood mind you and no nudity (just in case you were looking especially for those things, either because they interest you or appall you).

You can't or shouldn't compare this with a big budget movie though. It's what it's supposed to be: A nice little snack, an appetizer let's say, no pun intended. It is predictable and does not really make a secret of one of the (supposedly) big mysteries of the movie, but it still works nice enough

This movie was far better than I expected. A easy thriller to get into, with a lot of action and intriguing twists and turns. The lighting and cinematography was very good, and the characters were intriguing.

The acting and special effects could have been better, and some may wish it to be more scary, but I don't think anything about this movie was poor or cheesy. Especially considering a cast of so few "big name actors".

I was never bored or disappointed. As action-thriller it did all I would want from the genre, it surprised, thrilled, was nice to view, and engaged me enough emotionally to care what happened. I was well entertained and think a rating of 5 or lower is very harsh when you compare it to other films with a similar rating.

Twenty-film years after a kid inadvertently kills the werewolf that's attacking his family by setting his house on fire, he finds himself in the rural town of Dravicu on the hunt to kill more werewolves. Meanwhile, a local doctor's apprentice seeks to join up with the group of werewolf hunters much to the reluctance of pretty much everybody else.

The production values were a tad bit better than I expected and the acting, if over-dramatic, was still solid enough. The story was a bit on the predictable side, but I've seen many worse werewolf films in my life.