Howl (2015) (Blu-ray Review)
Directed By: Paul Hyett
Starring: Ed Speleers, Holly Weston, Shauna Macdonald
Rated: UR/Region A/2:35/1080p/Number of Discs 1
Available from Alchemy
On a dark and stormy night the last train out of London comes to a sudden halt deep in the middle of a forest. After the driver ventures out to investigate and never returns, the passengers are in a state of panic – particularly after seeing the driver’s mutilated body outside the carriage. Realizing there’s something dangerous lurking in the forest, a ticket-collector, Joe (Ed Speleers), tells the passengers to make barricades to secure themselves in the carriage, but soon the deadly creature is stalking the besieged train and smashing through their defenses, picking them off one-by-one. Joe rallies his ‘pack’ of passengers to fight back. During a vicious battle they manage to kill the creature, revealing it to be a hideous mutated fusion of human and wild animal – a werewolf. However, celebrations are cut short when they hear more howls coming from the forest…
Things get a bit hairy in this new werewolf movie, that doesn’t just have your basic layout for a werewolf flick, it toys with things a bit. As bad luck would have it, our cast of character get stranded in a very bad situation and when things hit the fan, we actually have a cast of characters the makers of the film took some time to try to make us care about. That is always good and it can add to the story, it adds to the story and how you feel about what it going down a bit here. One thing I do want to bring up is our wolves. Take it from me, these things are some very hardcore looking beast that look the part if nothing else. They are big and scary looking. If you are a fan of horror, then I don’t have to tell you that for normal people being stuck fending off werewolves, the werewolves wouldn’t be at all easy to kill. That is done in a pretty logical fashion here and I think it also helps the movie out a great deal as you watch.
That also leads us over to the effects work here, which I find to be pretty top notch overall. The blood can really fly at times in this movie and I always am a big of when that happens. I think if you aren’t sticking around with this one for the wolves, you’ll probably want to at least stick with things for the gore. Look, in the end, Howl, might not be reinventing the werewolf movie wheel, but it does a lot of good for at least making a nice spot for its self to shine in a time when the movie world really does need new werewolves movies for us to enjoy. Maybe it doesn’t end-up being the new Howling or Silver Bullet, but it is a nice bright spot to help start off the horror cycle in 2016 already.
Extras
– Behind the Scenes Making Of Feature
Quality of Transfer: 98%
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Howl
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