There’s a scene mid-movie in Danny Draven’s Full Moon
Features entry Models vs. Werewolves where a group of Instagram models
are gathered around a television in the remote cabin they’ve been lured into
for feed to werewolves lurking outside and they’re watching the movie Trancers. Produced and directed by Charles Band in
1984, it was a sneaky tribute to the Full Moon Features’ back catalog and
unfortunately also landed as funereal for their glory days. Though they’ve always been low-budget
filmmakers cranking out cheesy trash featuring notable actors in them, there’s
still a charm to watching miniatures or handmade homegrown effects work and
regional filmmaking joy on full display.
While there’s still some semblance of that joy left, throughout the film
featuring a lovely cameo from the wonderful Dee Wallace, from beginning to end
there seems to be generative AI used for some of the wide nighttime shots of
full moons over mountaintops. In another
moment, Dee Wallace even makes a joke about souping up the look of the cabin
the models are staying in with AI, furthering without a doubt Charles Band and
Danny Draven had no shame in utilizing it for their film.
Bad AI aside, the film is kind of like The Neon Demon meets
Ginger Snaps with just a hint of The Green Inferno and its social
media acolytes albeit with a fraction of the insight and transgressive horrors
tapped into by those pictures. Warning
you not to take it seriously from the get-go with cheap sounding synth music by
Jojo Draven and serviceable slick digital cinematography by Thomas L. Callaway,
the strength of the film rests with Danny Draven’s practical effects of the
werewolves mixed with digital gore and primarily the ensemble cast of
actresses.
The one who does the most
heavy lifting in terms of strutting her stuff with sass and sexiness including
a gag about selfies and feet pics is Hannah Hueston whose foray into becoming a
werewolf is done surprisingly convincingly.
Bella Mraz, Rebecca Stoughton, Sophie Swisczcz and Alexa Reddy comprise
some of the other cast members while the werewolf itself is Michael J. Sielaff
under a body suit but mostly the highlights boil down to Hannah Hueston, Bella
Mraz and particularly the legendary Dee Wallace who in a meta-horror moment
squares off with a werewolf.
One of the few times I can remember a movie being somewhat
redeemed by the special features portion which featured a behind-the-scenes
documentary with extensive interviews with the cast and crew who seem to be
having a fun time making it with practical props on set, Models vs.
Werewolves like the recently reviewed My Only Friend’s a Corpse is
exactly as it seems from the outset. You
know full well it is going to be a horror comedy of sorts and while the quality
quotient for a Charles Band production is a mere shadow of his former self, its
hard not to give in to the film’s silliness.
The generative AI however will be a big problem for some viewers despite
being penned as ‘Filmed in Blood-O-Vision!’.
Despite cracking a joke about it early on, it feels like a get-out-of-jail-for-free
card used as an excuse for using it anyway and tragically it tended to
undermine the practical hard earned and earnest efforts of the cast and
crew. When it isn’t giving us overproduced
effects shots of nighttime mountains under the moon, it otherwise works fine as
a microbudget werewolf flick. I
appreciate and respect Charles Band’s Roger Cormanesque dedication to economy
and cheapness but it became occasionally intolerable here.
Longtime Full Moon Features fans may or may not want to give
this a spin. When it focused purely on
the actresses being ditzy scream queens getting torn to pieces by werewolves it
worked fine. When it kept giving us
aerial transitional shots that did not look like they were rendered by an
effects team, it really worked against the film as a whole. Lose the AI for something a little more
tactile, even shoddy looking, and the ratings for this film will rise
sharply.
The disc itself looks and
sounds fine with 2.0 stereo and optional 5.1 surround sound for those who
really want to hear Jojo Draven’s synth score in 6-track. Overall I was entertained by this while
shaking my fists in the air anytime AI was used. Models vs. Werewolves is classic
Charles Band fodder in longtime tradition with his penchant for cheapness but
the face of Full Moon Features is sadly long since been a mere shadow of its
former self.
--Andrew Kotwicki