Hunter's Moon

Director - Michael Caissie (Speak of the Devil, Purgatory)

Starring - Katrina Bowden (Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Sex Drive), Jay Mohr (Go, Small Soldiers), and Will Carlson (Killer App, Captain America: The First Avenger)

Release Date - 2020

Genre - Crime/Horror

Tagline - "Something evil lurks within"

Format - DVD (Personal Collection) (Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

     My October horror binge has taken me through some up and downs.  I always seem to find bad movies in clusters before moving on to a string of good movies.  After I went into the August Underground trilogy I decided to hit up a few monster movies to clean the taste out of my mouth.  My trip into Jeremy Gardner's After Midnight was fun so I decided to follow that up with a new werewolf flick that was sent over for review.  Hunter's Moon arrived a few months ago and I never took the time to check it out but I decided this was the perfect time to dig into it.  Sadly, I should have waited a little longer.  

     The film follows a family that moves into an old house isolated in the woods.  The parents leave their daughters there while they go away for a few nights.  One of the girls invites a few guys over to party and have fun but the guys have a different plan in store for the young beauties.  Instead, they want to rob the house because they secretly have ties to it after helping a serial killer who lived there before gain his victims.  What the guys don't know is that these are not normal ladies and they too have a dark secret.  

     I knew this was a werewolf flick that had Thomas Jane in it but that was the only thing I knew about this one.  The movie started out a little dry but progressivly improved only to completely unravel in the third act.  I really wanted to like this one but when it was all said and done I couldn't.  The acting in this one is solid but the characters are painfully cliched.  In fact, there was a few times that I forgot which cast member was portraying which character.  The cast tries but their personalities and portrayals are very cliched and unenthused.  Even Thomas Jane delivers a very stereotypical backwood's sheriff that offers very little to the story.  The story for this one has so much potential but doesn't know how to tell it.  The film wants to deliver a huge twist but the viewer knows exactly how the film is going to play out so the twist doesn't work.  If the story was told in a more linear fashion in typical movie style it would have been one hell of a werewolf flick.  However, as it is I find it to be rather dull and very ineffective.  Finally, the film has some bloody moments but nothing we haven't seen before.  The practical effects are decent but nothing that really stands out.  The werewolf that we see for a total of maybe five minutes look absolutely fantastic.  Most movies have a hard time pulling off a werewolf but this film nailed it.  Sadly, they don't let the viewer see it enough.  Overall, Hunter's Moon had the makings of good werewolf flick but approached it in the wrong manner.  It's predictable and very uneventful.  This is one I would skip.