Internet Janitor
This is not Frank Grillo’s fault. I don’t want to hear any of that. He did his best and Grillod it up. It is mind-boggling that “The Purge with Werewolves” and Frank Grillo didn’t work out. Much of this movie relies on people doing the stupidest thing possible. Hmm, I guess watching the news in 2025, that might be 100% realistic. My bad.
It has been one year since the supermoon turned everyone it touched into werewolves until it was over. This time, people are more prepared with special shelters and other precautions against werewolves and the moonlight. We center in on a group of complete morons in the military, or whatever doing an experiment a tech-savvy three-year-old could have told them was “really poorly conceived and executed.” Kids these days, am I right? Anyway, it goes wrong because, of course, it does, and then our heroes, Frank Grillo and Amy (played by Katrina Law from Arrow and 12 Gifts for Christmas), set out to check on the well-being of the Grillos family.
On a very positive note, the movie deserves credit for using practical effects for the werewolves. They easily could have come up with some CGI abomination but chose to go practical. Now, the practical effects are not great but they still make all the scenes with them better.
Okay, let’s go back to the experiment that drives the plot here. These geniuses, working on a cure, have three volunteers in cages to test the effects. Cages are not bolted to the ground and could be easily tipped over by violent animals inside if things go wrong. They are so incredibly incompetent and also do not have any realistic contingency plan like massive amounts of guns or electrocuting the cages. The ease, the simple ease with which things go wrong, is hilarious.
Positivity break again. They make the best use of a lower budget than I have seen in awhile. There are smart choices for shots here to make them effective but not cost additional money. It’s mostly small-scale with Grillo and Amy, with occasional visits to his family as they cope with the night.
Yet, in the end, it’s generic. That budget issue, while it works in others, fails the rest of the time. There are too many gaps in the action without the story or character to cover that time. Everyone is generic except for Grillo, all hail. If you can guess the fate of a character, then that is exactly what’s going to happen. I could see parts of the ending happening in my head forty minutes before they happened.
It’s a great idea. They make some great choices, but damn, this was a slog to make it to the end.
Grillo be praised…