Lobisomem: A Besta Entre Nós

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.

It's amazing how many horror films open up with a pretty young lady running scared through a forest. At least the one that opens this film is allowed to wear some clothes. From those first moments, the pace never lets up in this hidden gem of a movie.

Louis Morneau directs events wonderfully well, creating a lush, eerily fairytale-type setting for the story. Everything is very moodily lit and the sets are wonderfully detailed.

The acting is powerful throughout, especially Adam Croasdell, who makes a powerfully, self-adoring Stefan - and it's always good to see Stephen Rea in these kind of productions.

My only gripe is the CGI, which comes into play for the more athletic lycanthropic scenes. I'm not a fan of CGI, unless there are enough millions of pounds or dollars to make it truly convincing. Otherwise, great fun. My score is 8 out of 10.

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")

Good to see that some directors are taking the werewolf genre back to the originality and not just have some musclebound hunk of a teenage idol run around without a shirt and pass as a werewolf.

The story in "Werewolf: The Beast Among Us" was interesting and packed with action, not to mention a very large amount of mutilation and mayhem. A lot of people ended up dead in this movie, but the best part was the aftermath of the carnage (as the movie didn't really focus that much on the slaughter itself). There was a lot of good and interesting things here, such as severed limbs, massive bite wounds, tear marks from claws and the like. So it does have a good amount of gore, for all us gore hounds out there.

But back to the story, initially it is a story that takes places in a small 19th century village; a village that is terrorized by a beast unlike any other. The werewolf that is terrorizing the village is big, bad and hungry for blood.

However, there is an interesting twist to the movie that makes it interesting and stand out from the otherwise generic movies of the werewolf genre. I will not reveal what it is here, but I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed that take on the werewolf's story that the director and writer had opted to go for with this movie. Plus there is another big plot twist later on, with one of the hunters. Again I will not reveal it, as it would be spoiling the movie. Just watch and see for yourself.

The setting of the movie was great, lots of nice details to the costumes and sets. However, it was little bit confusing as to where they wanted the movie to take place, as the costumes would suggest somewhere in the Eastern parts of Europe, but for some reason everyone spoke fluently English; aside from the questionable accent here and there.

They had put together a rather good group of people for this movie. Lots of good acting on the screen and people really did work well in their roles, and the characters were nicely portrayed and came to life quite well on the screen.

Of course you can't have a werewolf movie without a proper werewolf. And the CGI effects in "Werewolf: The Beast Among Us" were working well for the movie, as the werewolf looked quite cool. Great transformation scenes, and a lot of good scenes where you get to see the actual creature, instead of just odd bits and glimpses here and there.

If you enjoy werewolf movies of the older type (classic style), then you should definitely check out "Werewolf: The Beast Among Us", because it is a lot of fun and a good movie to watch.

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.