Thursday 11 August 2016

She Wolf Rising (2016)



A young horror film buff meets his favourite scream queen, Gina Skylar.  It seems like all his dreams have come true when they hit it off, and he readily agrees to help Gina look for the footage of her latest film, which has been stolen. The girl of his dreams may turn out to be a nightmare though, because it seems rather likely she is a werewolf ...

So first things first: at no point is this movie something you'd call "good". The acting - other than the two leads - is generally wooden; the effects work is dreadful; and there's a regrettable amount of casual homophobia in the dialogue.  And yet for the first thirty minutes I was actually having a good enough time to consider giving it a qualified recommendation

So what did I like about it, at least at first?  Well, Tiffany Shepis is almost always better than the material she's in, and she and Timothy Mandala work well together as the central couple.  There's a playful sense of waiting for the penny to drop as to Gina's real nature, particularly since for much of the first act it is not clear whether or not she is sincerely interested in him or secretly stalking him as prey.

Alas in the second act the film starts to get some serious script wobbles: there's the deeply silly means by which Gina's transformations are triggered, for one thing, and there's a significant loss of momentum in the story at around the same time.

And then, at about the 70 minute mark, just as the film appears to be getting back on track, they seem to have completely given up on the whole thing and just thrown any old rubbish up there to pad things out to a 90 minute run time.  Very disappointing.

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