The Beast of Bray Road

Review: The Beast of Bray Road(2005) So here's another one of those straight to DVD horror films that can either be really fun or really bad. So besides vampires, the second most played out genre is werewolves. Besides Neal Marshell's Dog Soldiers and Underworld, there has yet to be a were wolf film that has yet to broken new ground. Beat of Bray Road is somewhat based on a true legend in the Midwest about sightings of a real life were wolf on this road. This film comes from the same people who delivered the kick ass and fun "Jolly Roger" so I was pretty much expecting the same kind of film and hoped it would be just as good. Well the good news is the it is pretty good but the bad news is that it's as fun as Jolly Roger. While Jolly Roger was horror fun, Beast of Bray Road is more serious and straight forward horror film. Is that a good thing or bad thing...well truth is it's not a bad thing but it's not but it does hurt the film a little.

The Beast of Bray Road is more about telling a story then having killing and nudity every 10 minutes. The film feels like a real real story as it unfolds through out the film. I really liked the fact that the film was more about the characters of the small town and how the strange creature effects the town. So I liked the characters interacted with each other and slowly unfolded. But the bad thing is that the film makes the same mistake as other low budget films that want to be like real films...it tries to tell a story that sometimes feels dragged on in certain places. I liked the story of the film a lot but there were some moments that seemed too long or uninteresting(plus some of the bland acting by some of the actors really doesn't help either). I really loved where writer/director Leigh Scott took the story and I knew just want he was trying to do. He really wanted to make a different kind of low budget horror film by taking it back to more of a classic story telling point of view ala Stephen King based classic like Pet Cementary and Graveyeard Shift. So I knew just were he was coming from and I really respected him for trying to do a different kind of film. He really does deliver a pretty good film here and a great story. I really liked that he made it flow so smoothly and had the set up of other bigger films. On the downside, I saw a lot of things coming but I really didn't care. I was really digging this film to bother with that. But the film's twist ending did have me bummed. I could tell from the way the character was written that they were going to be the werewolf because it was a classic set up of making the character so likable that I knew they were setting it up for them to be the were wolf. I knew they were going to do it for twist's sake, I didn't want them to do it but they did it and I hated it. But besides that...Scott writes a great film considering the budget he had to work with so much love for him for that.

Acting wise, this film suffers again...like most low budget horror does from bad supporting cast. The leads were pretty great a believable. Jeff Denton as our lead Phil was great and I really liked the guy. Sarah Lieving was great as Kelly. Not only did she look good but the girl could actually act and was just fun to see on the screen. At least Jeff and Sarah had noticeable chemistry unlike the bigger budgeted The Fog remake where the awful Tom Welling and Maggie Grace had ZERO chemistry on screen and couldn't even act.Tom Downey from Jolly Roger is in this film and is great again. I really like him...he plays it straight but realistic. Now comes the only really draw back to the whole film...the acting of some of the supporting cast. Afew are pretty good at doing what they have to do but others here are just plain bland. They have zero personality on screen and it really comes across and hurts the film a lot. With the kind of script that Scott wrote, it would have really needed good actors to make the story interesting and alive but instead they drag the interesting script to kind of a bore. Then there's Tom Nagel, once again...he blows another role. I don't get this guy, he acting is just that...acting. He doesn't seem natural at all and is straight out acting and it gets annoying fast. I'm not a fan of his at all.

Direcing wise Scott does a really bang up job. I really liked all the different stuff he brought to this film. First he shot it pretty straight forward, there's nothing wrong with that because it gives the film a real classic feel to it. It seemed more like I was watching a real film than some low budget horror. Scott has a real feel for capturing that old school feeling and I really dug him a lot. All in all The Beast of Bray Road was as fun as I hoped it would have been but it was pretty interesting to watch. I really liked how the story unfolded and I liked the cool bloody kills. The film was hurt by some bland acting by actors here and there but I dug the whole film a lot. It's a smart, good little film that gave me what I wanted but still has it's problems. But it's all good. Great show.

After seeing this movie, if I were single, I'd be moving to Wisconsin. A small town full of smokin' hot women where all the men are drunken derelicts sounds perfect for a decent guy to move into.

But on to the movie. I thought it was a decent low-budget werewolf flick. Certainly worth the rental and far better than a lot of junk out there (Carnosaur, Alien Apocalypse, War of the Planets). Really, the acting was much better than I expected. The romance scenes were light-years ahead of Star Wars, Episode III (although that's not a huge endorsement).

The special effects were also pretty good considering the obvious low budget. The werewolf certainly didn't compare to anything from Underworld, but it wasn't nearly as cheesy as I was worried it might be.

I thought the plot moved along at a decent clip and even had a couple of unexpected twists.

All in all, I enjoyed the movie as a good, check-your-brain-at-the-door type flick. It was fun. What more do you expect from a low-budget monster movie?

Leigh Scott's "The Beast of Bray Road," released in 2005, is a very loose telling of the legendary "dogman" of SE Wisconsin. In reality, the beast has only been sighted and has never killed anyone. In the film, however, numerous people bite the dust in extremely gory scenes, heads getting torn off, the beast eating their innards, etc.

In the beginning it's unclear what type of beast the "dogman" is, is it a bigfoot? A werewolf? A cryptozoologist appears and helps the police pinpoint the probable nature of the creature.

POSITIVES:

• I liked the main protagonists, the police chief (Jeff Denton), the cryptozoologist, the beautiful bartender Kelly (Sarah Lieving) and the other police personnel.

• The story is generally compelling and moves right along.

• The killer creature looks excellent and you get quite a few good looks at it; no CGI.

• The story turns out to be a mystery. The beast may be a human being that transforms into the bloodthirsty creature. If so, who is it? If you've seen films like "The Howling V: The Rebirth" you know what to look for.

NEGATIVES:

• Although the story takes place near Elkhorn & Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, the film was shot in friggin' California, near Los Angeles, likely to keep expenses down; they did fine, however, making sure the scenery didn't look too much like typical Southern California. It sorta passes for SE Wisconsin, I guess.

• The film is filled with gorgeous women from beginning to end but Mr. Scott fumbles the ball and doesn't truly take advantage (and I'm not talking about top nudity or sex scenes at all; the film has some of both). Scott does much better in this area in 2008's "Flu Birds" and 2009's "The Dunwich Horror."

• Until the last act the film has a we're-not-taking-this-too-seriously vibe. It wasn't so bad to ruin the horror experience, but it was there. This is a minor cavil, however; all-in-all the filmmakers did a decent job balancing camp with serious horror.

• Every Wisconsin yokel, male or female, is portrayed as a hip, dour, alcohol-guzzling sex-fiend.

BOTTOM LINE: "The Beast of Bray Road" is a worthwhile killer beast flick but contains enough negative elements to prevent it from being truly good. The non-CGI monster looks great, however, and is worth the price of admission, not to mention this is a must if you're a gorehound (I'm not; I can take gore or leave it; all I care about is that the story & cast be interesting and entertaining).

The film runs 80 minutes.

GRADE: Borderline C+ or B-

This Wisconsin werewolf movie is supposedly based on a local legend, however, it appears to take massive liberties with the original fable. Unflattering stereotype hicks abound, and at some point, almost every character has a beer in their hand. Now some of this is actually amusing, as almost every monster on the loose film out there has been "borrowed" from. There is some gratuitous nudity involving a couple parking for some "business" and perhaps capturing a werewolf cell phone picture, that borders on the ridiculous, but does add to the fun. The ending is a real rubber band job (stretch). Not bad of it's type, and marginally recommended. - MERK

Okay, I just watched Beast of Bray Road. It was the new werewolf flick from Asylum.

The film didn't really cover any new ground, it was a pretty much by the numbers werewolf flick. The story was similar to the Jaws story line. The acting for the most part was pretty decent. The beast looked like a cross between a werewolf and bigfoot. No cgi, which I liked, this was a good old school guy in a costume. We don't get any full transformation scenes, but considering the budget I would say that was for the best.

Nothing new here, but it didn't bore me either, moving along at a decent pace. We had a good amount of gore and a little bit of boobs. Don't go out of your way looking for this unless you need to see every werewolf movie, but there are worse ways to spend 90 minutes.