Dark Moon Rising

When you put the line on your DVD sleeve "twilight meets ginger snaps" than you have put the cat with the milk. Immediately you will refer to Twilight and admit it, Twilight was a big insult to the genre. It had nothing to do with horror or vampires or werewolves. It was just a love story with a strange twist. And I must say that this flick is indeed the same story of Twilight but without the vampires. But it clocks in at around 2 hours and that's a bit too long as did the Twilight shite. It's all about a normal girl falling in love with a stranger who appears to be a werewolf. But not only that, there's another werewolf on the loose. This is Dana Minnie's first attempt to make a horror. Being the story a bit too lame it's good on the gory side. The bites and killings are indeed gory and the guys will be amused by some nudity. Based for me a bit too much on Twilight I would tear it down but due the gory bits I gave it a 3. It's not like Twilight for 5 or 6 year old ones, this is for teenager ready to take some red stuff and a lot of love story. The acting was okay and believable but the werewolves were a bit to much of CGI and you could see the use of blue key. If they only had the werewolves done with real effects in stead of CGI it would have been much better.

Dark Moon Rising / Wolf Moon is a love story... no, it's a story of a reluctant werewolf... no, it's a story of two families coming together... Well, it's a lot of things and not all of them pleasant. First and foremost it's the story of a girl with a single father who happens to fall for the bad boy werewolf drifter and could've ended happily at just that if not for the father's dislike/distrust for the new boyfriend and the fact that the boy's psychopath werewolf father is trying to track him down for a family reunion.

For what it is, the film is decently acted and the story is moderately compelling. The big bad daddy wolf is a genuine monster and regales us with moderate gore, besides being a somewhat likable villain. The boy and girl are passable actors allowing their scenes to outshine their limited talent. The girl's father and the sheriff feel like something ripped out of a low budget Syfy Original (is there any other kind?) but they're not bad beyond possibly being somewhat derivative. The real flaw, through and through, are the horrendous special effects. The transformations are hokey, corny, and completely devoid of any real passion; the costumes are, well, just so obviously costumes that it ruins any thrill. Compared even to the presumably smaller budgeted Werewolf: The Devil's Hound, the special effects in DMR are flat out lousy and inexcusable especially considering the rest of the movie which is pleasant if not good. It's a shame that they decided to completely shunt the werewolf angle in a werewolf movie but, after all, this film is probably more of a teeny romance than anything else.

Slated between fantasy/sci-fi/moderately horror this film lays an egg in pretty much all counts. It's a laughable love story between a woman and a man/wolf, a father and son curse and eventual showdown. The screenplay is mediocre at best with a lot of cussing in the dialogue. I was shocked well known actor Chris Mulkey and actress/singer Maria Conchita Alonso signed on for this. Alonso's character as Sherriff is poorly acted and makes no real sense for her being there. Throw in Sid Haig who is known for non-conforming roles and he was fun to see. The music score was slightly misplaced in some scenes but not overly bad. Now the actual werewolves creature is poorly designed, contrasting in how they transform is laughable. No true CGI involvement. I give it a 4 based on scenery alone.

The tragedy of this movie is that it has some really good elements. Some the dialogue is sharp. There are some talented performers involved: Billy Drago, Maria Conchita Alonso and Sid Haig, in particular, have enough screen presence to be compelling even in a low-budget production. Some character exchanges and even a couple of entire scenes are quite good. Alas the remainder of the production is amateur-hour ineptitude. The cinematography is like someone with a camcorder dialed the tint all the way up. The pacing and plot progression are incompetent: characters and concepts are introduced and then ignored for long stretches. The characters' motivations, and the plot as a whole, are trite and often nonsensical. The editing is flabby. There's no stakes, urgency or tension. I'm a sucker for a good werewolf movie - or even a bad one - but this barely qualifies as a movie.

This movie fails on every possible level. To start at the beginning, the soundtrack. Horrible. Worse than open mike night at the bar. Story ~ like it's written by a horny 13 year old. Topless women in scenes that have nothing to do with the story. Continuity ~ I kept waiting for something's to actually tie together. Acting ~ everyone is about as energized as a frat house on the morning after a keger. Editing, lighting, hell even the costumes look like they were slept in. The special effects were NOT special. Most of the movie takes place at night but it's so dark you can't really see anything , which I guess might be on purpose to cover for all the other problems. Don't just don't.