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Werewolf: The Beast Among Us (2012)

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Overall Rating 51%
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Ranked #5,192
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Set in a 19th century village, a young man studying under a local doctor joins a team of hunters on the trail of a wolf-like creature. --IMDb
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Review by Crispy
Added: February 25, 2015
I'm sure by now you've noticed that my Februarys are dedicated to the violent werewolf genre, and I've seen Werewolf: Beast Among Us floating around on Netflix more than once over the last few years. Unfortunately, I just never got around to it in years past; I've been missing out.

Killing werewolves is all Charles has ever known. His family comes from a long line of lycanthrope hunters, and after his parents were slaughtered when he was a kid, he's gone on to become one of the most prolific in the business. Speaking of, he heads to the town of Dravico after he's told of another beasty, but this is going to be like nothing he or his team has ever seen before. You see, this particular werewolf doesn't need to wait around for the full moon to transform, and the town's population is quickly dwindling. While they're initially reluctant, the team eventually accepts a young doctor's apprentice named Daniel into their fold. Despite the cries of his girlfriend and his mentor's attempts to send him off to college, he is adamant that he needs to do his part to protect his family and friends.

As a werewolf movie, this one falls somewhere in between a horror movie and an action movie in the vein of Van Helsing. Charles' team is a one-dimensional group of characters with weapons that are either more fashion than functional (silver fangs?) or completely anachronistic (a flame thrower in what looks like the early 1800s). They come complete with some witty one-liners and some pounding, generic rock music as they're getting ready. However, once the wolf actually shows up, things switch to a decidedly more horror tone. It didn't go far enough into either genre to create a jarring transition, and for the most part it worked extremely well. With that said, the big climax was closer to the action side of things than the horror, and I definitely would have liked it to be the other way around.

One problem I did have is that they just added way too many villains other than the werewolf in at the last minute. I'm not going to go into details obviously but suffice to say it was just too much. I was OK with the first since it kind of fit the narrative, even if his motives were a bit cheesy, but the rest of them just felt tacked on as an afterthought. For example, there's this one guy that's kind of an asshole throughout the movie, nothing major. Then all of a sudden, he's a crazed rapist who takes up the majority of the climax. Also, they explain early on that if you don't burn the carcass of a werewolf's victim it turns into a creature called a wurdalak. It's obvious that there's going to be one running around before the credits roll. Apparently, a wurdalak is just an incredibly strong person that can take a few hits. I don't know what I was expecting, but I at least wanted something worth talking about.

I know my plot synopsis above doesn't really make this apparent, but The Beast Among Us is actually focused just as much on Daniel than Charles. Together, Guy Wilson and Ed Quinn both shouldered the load easily enough as a young but determined kid in over his head and a calm, confident veteran respectively. They have an easy chemistry that makes their mentor/student relationship easy to follow. Other then than, the only two worth mentioning are Adam Croasdell and Steven Bauer, two members of Charles' team. Bauer in particular had a crazed charisma that had a smile on my face at all times. Hell, I'd love to see him as the main star in his own movie.

It's certainly got its problems, but there's a lot of fun to be found with Werewolf: The Beast Among Us. It's definitely earned itself a slot in my yearly werewolf celebration, and it also gets a bonus hurrah for a wicked little Wolf Man reference. 7.5/10.
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