Weekend Screen Scene: Sinners

Experiencing Ryan Coogler's Sinners, ideally in IMAX, is the kind of cinematic experience that reminds any movie lover just why they love movies, and could well convince the skeptical that cinema can be a transcendent experience. 

Sinners is really three movies wrapped into one. It's a historical drama, set in 1932 Mississippi, where twin brothers Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan) have returned to town from adventures in underworld Chicago to open a juke joint. It's a musical, about Sammie (Miles Caton), a preacher's son, blues guitarist, and singer, who wants to pursue his musical passions, despite the objections of his father. And it's a horror movie, about monsters both real and supernatural.

How Coogler melds all of this together is masterful. There are only a few filmmakers I trust completely, meaning I can go into their films knowing that even if I don't end up loving the movie, I'm in the hands of a master who understands how to craft a movie. Coogler is becoming one of them. 

There's a sequence near the middle of the film, once the Smoke Stack brothers have opened their juke joint, Sammie begins to play, and the legend that music can "pierce the veil between life and death" begins to come to life. Past, present, and future start to share the screen, the camera glides around the dance floor, and all of these pieces that shouldn't work together come into harmony. It's the most electric bit of filmmaking I've seen in years.

Love and sex, violence and blood, all play a part in Sinners, but it's the music that's going to linger. Coogler has once again teamed with Ludwig Göransson for a score that, like the film itself, is a melding of genres that one would assume to be discordant, but just works. Filled with swampy blues, Irish folk songs, and a score that melds it all and more, the soundtrack deserves the same kind of fervor the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack garnered. 

I'm purposely avoiding saying much about the plot because I went into Sinners only knowing what was in the trailer, and that was even more than I wish I'd known (the trailer above is the most obtuse I could find). I was still happy to be surprised, and let the nuances of the characters and plot reveal themselves. One of the biggest sins of a horror movie is not giving you any reason to actually love the characters that are eventually put in danger. That's not the case here, as Coogler allows the characters to slowly reveal themselves, and their backstories. When it comes time for them to fight, you're cheering them on.

In the age of streaming it can be hard to convince people to fork over the dough for a movie theater experience. But I really can't stress enough that Sinners really should be seen in a theater. If you're in the Bay Area, see it at the Metreon in IMAX, which is one of the only true IMAX theaters in California. And if I can't convince you, I'll let Ryan Coogler try, with this bit of video where he nerds out explaining film formats and aspect ratios.

Weekend Screen Scene: Drop, Sacramento

First dates can be pretty harrowing experiences, but hopefully not as harrowing as the first date in Drop.

Violet (Meghann Fahy), the widowed survivor of an abusive relationship, has agreed to finally meet the man she's been texting with for months, leaving her young son with her sister as baby sitter. Her date is Henry (Brandon Sklenar, probably best known as the nice guy in another domestic violence tale called It Ends With Us), a photographer with the mayor's office. He's very polite, and very cute. All is going well until Violet starts to get some ominous "AirDrop" messages (here called "digiDrops") telling her unless she does what she's told, and does not tell her date what is happening, her son will die.

As tends to be the case with movies centered on technology, the tech in Drop is pretty preposterous, as is the notion that Henry would stick around for as long as he does once Violet starts acting completely insane, trying to keep what's happening to her secret. (She's constantly looking at her phone, leaving the table for various reasons, or asking to switch tables and then changing her mind.) But director Christopher Landon, who also directed the horror comedies Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2 U, knows how to keep the film fun and suspenseful, amping up visual tricks that keep you engaged, despite the action taking place in primarily one location.

Sacramento kept reminding me of a younger version of Sideways, but then I looked up the age Paul Giamatti was when he filmed Sideways, and turns out, he was 36! Which is the same age Michael Cera is! Mind blown! 

Now granted, I think Giamatti was actually supposed to be playing older in that movie, as Sideways is truly a middle aged crisis story, and Sacramento is closer to a quarter-life crisis story. Cera plays Glenn, who, with his wife Rosie (Kristen Stewart) are expecting their first child. He's doing his best to present a calm exterior about this impending life change, but Rosie knows better, and is clearly the more solid partner in this relationship.

When Glenn's old friend Rickey (Michael Angarano) shows up unexpectedly, Glenn is reluctant to have anything to do with him, but Rosie convinces him otherwise, thinking this reunion may help him out of his funk. Soon the two friends are on a road trip to Sacramento, ostensibly to scatter the ashes of Rickey's recently deceased father, a story that's not entirely true.

The best word to describe Sacramento is probably pleasant. It tells this story of two friends, both dealing with some heavy emotions they can't seem to express to each other, with a light touch, never getting too heavy, even when the subject matter can get a little dark. That owes a lot to the performances, which also includes a smaller role featuring Maya Erksine, and I'd gladly watch a spin-off or sequel that just focused on her entirely.

Weekend Screen Scene: Freaky Tales, The Luckiest Man In America

You don't have to be from the Bay Area to appreciate the Oakland-set Freaky Tales, but it probably helps one forgive some of the film's shortcomings. There's so much that will hit different for those from the Bay than for those who aren't, especially those who were here during 1987, the year the movie is set. 

Four interconnecting stories form Freaky Tales, all with some level of supernatural (or alien?) influence in the form of a strange green glow that seems to permeate the Town. The stories include punks vs skinheads at Gilman Street; a rap battle at Sweet Jimmie's between Too $hort (who actually narrates the movie, though he's played by DeMario Symba Driver in the battle) and the female rap duo Danger Zone; a hit-man (Pedro Pascal) on his last job, which starts at a video rental store with a familiar clerk; and a robbery at the home of Sleepy Floyd, the same legendary night he scored 29 points in the fourth quarter of game four of the playoffs against the Lakers. (For all the true details behind these stories, I recommend this piece from KQED.)

Written and directed by the team of Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, whose most recent film was the considerably bigger-budgeted Captain Marvel, the stories are obviously near and dear to the heart of Fleck, who grew up in Oakland and Berkeley. The era is nicely captured in the low-budget feel of the of the film, where such 80's cult classics as Repo-Man, Scanners, and The Last Dragon. are immediately brought to mind. This is a pulpy movie, with no shortage of gore and outrageous plot developments, perhaps sometimes too outrageous. But again, the love for Oakland that permeates the entire production makes it easy to shrug things like that off.

Freaky Tales would definitely benefit from a theatrical viewing, especially if you live in the Bay Area, so you can all laugh together as you recognize all the numerous cameos and locations, maybe even at the Grand Lake, which has a prominent cameo in two of the tales. Now that's a hella good time.

We're sticking in the 1980s for The Luckiest Man In America, the story of Michael Larson, who won over $100,000 on a single episode of Press Your Luck in 1984. First let me state that I don't think he did anything that should be considered cheating that day. The rest of the choices he made in life are a little sketchier, but winning on Press Your Luck was actually something that took a tremendous amount of skill, and it was impressive.

It's a story begging for a Hollywood telling, but The Luckiest Man In America chooses to fictionalize it in some weird ways that don't always work. Paul Walter Hauser is great as Larson, a stand out in an impressive cast that also includes David Strathairn, Walton Goggins, Pattie Harrison, and Maisie Williams. Johnny Knoxville also has a small role as a talk show host, but it's one of several moments in the movie that feels completely out of place; maybe even inexplicable.

The film works best when it is centered on the game show itself. The studio set is perfection, and brought to mind the equally impeccable retro set designs in the recent films Woman of the Hour and Late Night With the Devil. The game play is also pretty exciting, when the movie allows it to flow, which is not often enough. Watching it I just kept thinking there had to be a better way to open the story up than having the game constantly get interrupted for reasons that made sense (commercial breaks) and reasons that didn't (that aforementioned Johnny Knoxville scene.) Stick through the credits to get a glimpse of the actual Michael Larson on Press Your Luck, and if that and the film drive your curiosity enough, you can see most of the real episode on YouTube.

Weekend Screen Scene: Death of a Unicorn

I was a little apprehensive about seeing a movie called Death of a Unicorn because watching animals suffer on screen, even animals that don't actually exist in the real world (or do they??), is probably my Achilles's heel. I can't deal. And indeed, we do witness the death of a unicorn - several times! - and yes, it's hard to watch. And that definitely helps to turn what is supposed to be a very dark horror comedy into something veering into uncomfortably unfunny.

Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega star as Elliot and Ridley Kinter. They have a tense relationship; Ridley is a sullen teen, and they are both dealing with the death of her mother a year earlier. Hoping to both bond with his daughter and secure a solid financial future for her, Elliot takes her along on a work retreat to the home of his employers, the insanely rich Leopold family, who live a remote Canadian forest. Along the way, they hit a unicorn with their car, but that's not the last they see of it, or that unicorn's family.

The Leopold family are played by Richard E. Grant as the dying patriarch Odell; Téa Leoni as his wife Belinda; and Will Poulter as their asshole son Shepard. They all have their moments, but Poulter as Shephard probably gets the most laughs. He's just so good at playing contemptible characters.

But that's also part of the problem with Death of a Unicorn. All of the characters are some level of horrible, including Paul Rudd, who is not given nearly enough opportunities to be funny. Ortega has to shoulder the likability burden, but the story takes way too long to get to the point where you're really rooting for her, because Ridley is pretty annoying for a lot of it as well. (Anthony Carrigan, in a supporting role as the put-upon butler Griff, however, is hilarious, and the highlight of the movie.)

I'm all for an eat-the-rich story, and we seem to be getting a lot of them these last few years (hmmmm....wonder why?), and Death of a Unicorn does have a few satisfying moments of carnage. But its uneven tone, and a third act that drags ultimately sinks the film. The unicorns may have bite, but this satire does not.

Weekend Screen Scene: Snow White

Snow White, Disney's latest live-action update of a classic animated feature, was barely announced before the controversy surrounding it began. Some of the uproar was garbage, and some probably had some legitimacy. In either case, it resulted in a lot of negative buzz for the movie, ultimately even causing Disney to tone down its Hollywood premiere in an excess of caution.

When I say some of the uproar was garbage, I'm talking mainly about the screams of protest that erupted the second it was announced that Rachel Zegler, a Hispanic woman, was cast as Snow White. No matter that she does look the part, and has the voice needed for the musical role. And after seeing the movie, I can safely say, she's good! The movie's other efforts at inclusion could almost be called aggressive, and to that I also say, good. If this Snow White manages to piss off a bunch of racists, I do not have a single problem with that.

I'm less enthusiastic about the casting of Gal Gadot, and only some of that has to do with her stance on the Israel/Palestine conflict. I'm against her primarily because she cannot sing, and she brings nothing but her beauty to the role of the Wicked Queen, a character that deserves to be played with some level of camp and wicked joie de vivre.

Which brings us to the dwarves of it all. Frankly, I do not know how you can approach a story that features five dwarves who are primarily there for comedic relief and not have it be problematic. Feature them as fully animated characters, and you are depriving real actors from the LP community of acting roles. Cast real actors, and you are limiting their humanity to being the film's comic relief. It's a no win situation that Disney seems to have tried to rectify by casting one real LP to do one of the voices, and another as an entirely new character, who is not one of the dwarves.

To be fair, the word "dwarf" is never mentioned in this new Snow White (hence the truncated title), and since the "dwarves" are fully animated, and do not look much like the real LP who is also in the film, I believe we are to think of them as closer to gnomes, or purely fantastical beings. (They are, after all, said to be almost 250 years old).

The film's biggest sin is not in any of these controversies, but that it is simply not a lot of fun. Of course Snow White as a character had to be expanded, and given more agency. Having a heroine whose main character attributes are cleaning and falling in love with a man she's barely even met just would not fly today. And I can't argue with the film's chosen plotline that focuses on rising up against an evil leader who cares more about themself than those they lead, because, hello. But mixing in rebellion with peppy songs and cute (and I mean really, really cute) animals leaves us with a film that, while beautiful, in a Thomas Kincaide kind of way, is tonally all over the place, and only rarely captures the cinematic magic of the original classic.

Weekend Screen Scene: Mickey 17

Mickey 17 is director Bong Joon-Ho's first film since 2019's Oscar winning Parasite, and it tackles many of the themes found in that, and in his 2017 film Okja, specifically, capitalism, class, and how we humans treat each other, and other living things, all with the dark humor he's best known for.

Robert Pattinson stars as Mickey Barnes, who, like many people on the Earth of 2054, is desperate to leave, although his reasons center more on getting away from loan sharks than trying to escape a planet that's seen better days. That desperation results in him signing up to be an "expendable" on a space mission to colonize a planet, only realizing too late what this means: that he will be a human guinea pig tasked with the most deadly jobs and horrible experiments that will all lead to inevitable death, again and again. And these things will happen again and again because he will be cloned, with all memories intact, again and again. (That the cloning process essentially involves Mickey coming out of a huge 3D printer over and over is the film's funniest running gag.)

The colonizing mission is led by a Kenneth Marshall, a billionaire who, having failed as a politician, decides to just create his own fiefdom, and his wife, Ylfa, who is obsessed with...sauces. They are played, with much cartoonish villainy, by Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette, and it's not too hard to see a lot of this country's present leaders in their characterizations.

Mickey's life lives has one bright spot, and it's a girlfriend named Nasha (Naomi Ackie), who seems to view Mickey's multiple incarnations as a kinky asset and not a fault. But their relationship, and Mickey's future, is put to the test after their ship lands on the new planet, and Mickey breaks the one rule about "expendables"...

Robert Pattinson's performance, or more accurately, performances, as Mickey, complete with a very weird accent reportedly inspired by Steve Buscemi's voice in Fargo, is the highlight of the movie, and definitely keeps it afloat when it could easily sink under some of its clunkier moments. At times, it drags, especially its climax, which involves an extended confrontation with the native inhabitants of the planet. But Pattinson as the Mickeys, the all too familiar political absurdity that surrounds them, and Bong Joon-Ho's patented black humor, is a welcome reprieve from the actual absurdity of today.

Weekend Screen Scene: The Monkey

Osgood Perkins has been churning out atmospheric horror films for a few years now, but his latest, The Monkey, is his first outright horror comedy. Loosely adapted from the Stephen King short story "The Monkey," which was published in his 1985 collection Skeleton Crew, it's centered on an evil toy monkey that causes random deaths whenever the key in its back is turned, and its drumstick hits its drum.

The film follows the structure of many Stephen King properties, beginning with a story about kids, then leading to the story of them as adults. In this case, it's twin brothers Hal and Bill (Christian Convery), who live with their single mother Lois (Tatiana Maslany) after their airline pilot father (Adam Scott) ditches the family, leaving behind all the random junk he'd collected in his world travels, including a pristine, albeit very creepy wind-up toy monkey.

The boys, who hate each other, soon learn that monkey has the power to kill, which leads to a serious of random and very gruesome accidental deaths that the boys are eventually able to put on pause. For a while. Adult Hal and Bill (Theo James) grow up completely estranged, but the Monkey's return finds them both dealing with old grievances and new carnage. 

I've appreciated Oz Perkins' films, but I've never found myself really loving any of them. Too often I come away from them with the nagging feeling that he thinks he's way more clever than he actually is. I like The Monkey more than any of his past works, including last year's Longlegs, and the fact that it is a comedy that does succeed in its humor the majority of the time is probably why. I laughed a lot. But that doesn't mean it is without its flat jokes, and it's the jokes that fall flat that had me once again feeling that the movie is not quite as clever as it thinks it is.

The other film that most easily comes to mind when watching The Monkey is Final Destination. Both deal with the idea of death as inevitable destiny. But Final Destination's humor was built around the suspense of just how its characters would meet their end, which often happened in crazy Rube Goldberg-esque scenarios. In The Monkey, the deaths are just a series of sudden punchlines to the same joke, and not all of those punchlines land. Enough of them do to make the movie a success, but I'm still not completely sold on Osgood Perkins as our new master of horror...

Weekend Screen Scene: Captain America: Brave New World, Paddington in Peru

Captain American: Brave New World is ostensibly a sequel to Captain America: Civil War, and the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. At least, that's what one would assume. But in reality, it's also a sequel to 2003's The Incredible Hulk, which you may not remember since it came out over twenty years ago and didn't star Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk; it starred Edward Norton.

I may not be up on all Marvel Cinematic Universe lore, but I feel like I know enough to be confused by this decision, especially since the villain from that film also returns, and I'm sorry, as much as I may like Tim Blake Nelson, Samuel Sterns (AKA The Leader), at least as depicted in these two movies, is a boring villain! Also, very gross. Gross and boring do not a charismatic villain make! 

Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) is now officially Captain America, passing his Falcon wings down to Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez). This Captain America is not a super soldier, which one would assume would be a detriment, and it is. I can't believe at one time I complained about these Marvel movies having too many superheroes per movie because Brave New World feels empty with only one, especially one that could more easily die in any fight he's in.

For the majority of the movie, we also only have one villain, and this lack is only barely helped by the arrival of the Red Hulk, since that doesn't happen until the film's last fifteen minutes. (I'd say spoiler alert but it's on the poster. It ain't a surprise.) The overarching plot is also a snooze, centered on newly elected President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford, taking over the role from the late William Hurt) and his efforts to garner a treaty centered on the Celestial Island in the middle of the Indian Ocean that you probably don't know about unless you saw Eternals (which I have, and I barely remembered it).

As this is a Marvel movie, there are plenty of action sequences and fight scenes, but aside from some ridiculous monumental destruction near the film's end, none are particularly memorable. (Also, the theater I saw the movie in was so loud I began to dread any scene that wasn't just characters talking.)

I appreciate the idea of a Black Captain America, but the issue of this Black man fighting in the name of a country that has historically not championed Black Americans is pretty much ignored. Perhaps they figured since it had been covered a bit in the TV series, it didn't need mentioning. But that decision ultimately makes this already hollow movie feel practically cavernous.

Let's move on to a movie franchise that has yet to have a misfire: the Paddington movies! Paddington in Peru is the third film in the Paddington series, and while this one is a departure in many ways. with a new director, a new location, and, in some cases, a new cast, it's still got the same Paddington, and is therefore a delight.

Paddington the bear still loves his marmalade, still lives with the Brown family, and is still liable to stir up some misguided mischief. When he learns that his beloved aunt Lucy has gone missing from the Home for Retired Bears in Peru, Paddington and the Browns venture to his homeland to find her, and, as it turns out, possibly find the lost city of El Dorado along the way.

Hugh Bonneville is back as Mr. Brown, but Mrs. Brown is now played by Emily Mortimer, replacing Sally Hawkins. Most importantly, Ben Whishaw continues to voice Paddington, because any changes in that sweet and calming voice would surely be the death of the franchise. The best addition to the cast this time around is Olivia Colman who is hilarious as the Reverend Mother at the Home for Retired Bears. She's a nun with some secrets.

Paddington 2 was one of the rare sequels that was actually better than the film it follows, and while Paddington in Peru doesn't quite reach that level, it still manages to carry on the series in a utterly satisfying way. (And fans of Paddington 2 should definitely stick around for the credits for a little cameo at the end.)

Weekend Screen Scene: Heart Eyes, Love Hurts

Valentine's Day lends itself well to a horror movie plot, especially when you consider the violent origins of the holiday itself. The most well known V-Day horror is probably My Bloody Valentine, though my personal fave is a batshit crazy 1982 movie known as both Hospital Massacre and X-Ray. 

This year's entry into the Valentine's horror genre is Heart Eyes, which attempts to blend horror with romantic comedy but only partially succeeds at either. Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding star as Ally and Jay, two young professionals who meet cute but end up together on a platonic work date on Valentine's Day while Heart Eyes, a serial killer who targets couples is on the loose. When the killer sets his sights on Ally and Jay, they try to convince him they aren't actually a couple, to no avail.

Too much of the movie feels like a first draft, with jokes that fall flat more often than they hit, a weirdly paced plot with scenes that go one forever, all leading to an ending that's both obvious and dumb. Heart Eyes wants to be Scream so bad, but it isn't nearly as clever; it's a waste of a genuinely good concept for a slasher killer's mask, even if those heart eyes don't make a lot of sense when you think about it.

Before his return to acting and a Best Supporting Actor Oscar win for Everything Everywhere All At Once, Ke Huy Quan had been working behind the scenes choreographing fight sequences for a number of action films. Now he's the one doing the fighting in Love Hurts, this week's second Valentine's Day-themed film. And while not a horror movie, it definitely has as much, if not more, blood and violence as most of the V-Day horror movies out there.

Quan stars as Marvin, a seemingly mild-mannered real estate agent who finds himself called back into the crime world he left behind when Rose (Ariana DeBose), the woman he loves but was also supposed to kill years ago, returns to town.

Aside from that, the film really doesn't have much of a plot, and is instead scene after scene of fighting and shootouts, shootouts and fighting. As good as some of these sequences are - director Jonathan Eusebio does his best to place the camera in some unexpected places - it gets very repetitive very quickly, to the point of exhaustion. I fought the good fight and kept my eyes open, but I promise it wasn't an easy battle to win.

Weekend Screen Scene: Presence

Last year's In a Violent Nature was a unique approach to the slasher movie, an essentially POV movie that literally follows a killer around as he commits numerous murders one night in the woods. Steven Soderbergh's new ghost story, Presence, takes this POV approach one step further, as the whole film is "seen" through the eyes of a silent ghost in a haunted house.

POV movies seem to be having a moment. Last year also brought the (recently Oscar nominated) Nickel Boys, which is told entirely through the eyes of its two protagonists. This meant that often, other characters will be looking and speaking directing into the camera, as they interact with the two leads. But because the "presence" in Presence is an unseen entity, the film's characters, for the most part, do not know its there, and do not interact with it. In that respect, it balances a fine line, because when you think about it, the camera in most movies kind of behaves like an unseen ghostly entity floating around, capturing moments in time. 

The film's plot is pretty simple. Rebecca (Lucy Liu) and Chris (Chris Sullivan) and their teenage children Chloe (Callina Liang) and Tyler (Eddy Maday) all move into a house with a ghostly presence that takes a little while to make itself known to them. When it does, it focuses on Chloe, who is dealing with depression after the mysterious death of her best friend. Meanwhile, Rebecca and Chris are having some issues that may or may not involve something illegal on Rebecca's part, and Tyler is focused on swim meets, getting into college, and befriending the most popular boy in school.

The "ghost" pops in at random times in the family's daily lives, which means we, the audience, only get snippets of these characters interactions and conversations. As a result, some things remain pretty vague, while other things become painfully clear.

Soderbergh, as he often is, was also the cinematographer, and the handheld camerawork is smooth and suitably ghostly, like we're following the afterlife of a dead Steadicam operator. I would imagine having the director as, essentially, another cast member, albeit one holding a camera in your face, could be disconcerting to the actors, but all of the performances (save for one, near the end), feel completely real and natural.

Presence is not going to be everyone's cup of tea, and I could see it disappointing some horror fans, as it's not exactly a scare fest. It's a strange amalgam of traditional storytelling techniques, and experimental production. But at the hands of Steven Soderbergh, and at a brisk 90 minutes, it's an experimental movie that doesn't feel tedious.

Weekend Screen Scene: Wolf Man

Wolf Man, a reboot of the classic Universal character, was announced back in 2014, and was originally set to star Ryan Gosling. But when Universal's plans for a Dark Universe - a cinematic universe conceptually similar to Marvel and DC's cinematic universes - ended up dead on arrival with the 2017 reboot of The Mummy, plans to tie all these monster movies together were scrapped. Instead, Universal has released some stand-alone reboots of classic monster movies, including the aforementioned Mummy, Renfield, and The Invisible Man.

Which brings us back to Wolf Man, which also comes from The Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell. I enjoyed The Invisible Man, which I thought was a clever modern twist on "invisible" monsters, both literal and figurative. And I can see that Whannell is trying to do something similar with Wolf Man, turning it into a story about the horror of generational trauma, and also, you know, a werewolf. Unfortunately, it doesn't really work.

Christopher Abbott and Julie Garner star as Blake and Charlotte Lovell, San Francisco-based writers (we know they live in San Francisco because of the establishing shot of the skyline, and also because the one street scene - not actually shot in SF - includes a suspicious amount of homeless people on the sidewalk), who are parents to young daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth). When Blake gets news that his father, after disappearing years before, has been officially pronounced dead, he decides a visit to the remote cabin that filled his childhood with fear would be a great place to take his family.

Wolf Man wastes no time throwing the family into chaos; there's no settling into the cabin and getting comfy for this clan, and that's one of the film's biggest problems. Given no meaningful time to know these characters and care about them, when they're faced with danger and difficult decisions, we really have no investment in the outcome. And for a movie that's not even two hours long, stretches of it are incredibly boring.

There are some interesting aspects. We're given a glimpse into the world as the werewolf experiences it - in monochromatic color, eerily attuned to sounds in far off rooms, and suddenly unable to understand what people around him are saying, like a dog just hearing garbled sounds from its owner's mouth. And the transformation - every werewolf movie has to have one! - is gross in some surprising ways, and sticks primarily to practical effects, which is refreshing to see. I just wish those effects were a little...better. And that goes for the movie as a whole.