Boasting propulsive action and credible practical effects reminiscent of 1980s horror high-marks The Howling, An American Werewolf in London, and Silver Bullet, Werewolves blends classic horror, action-adventure, and creepy contagion terror to spawn a new take on the fearsome beasts that have long feasted on our imagination.
Werewolves & Wolf Men have rich, fascinating histories in folklore and pop culture
The movies have had lots of creatures — vampires, zombies, mummies, aliens, monsters made in a lab — but nothing has bitten into our collective imagination like the werewolf. As the ancient lore of “lycanthropy” (aka “werewolf-ism”) was adapted to the big screen and audiences saw human-to-animal transformations, the traditions were set: From the classic 1941 Lon Chaney-starring The Wolf Man (which itself followed 1935’s Werewolf of London), through Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, the 1956outsider-as-hunted beast flick The Werewolf, and through the 1961 Hammer horror
entry Curse of the Werewolf (starring Oliver Reed), the werewolf genre was beloved even before it leapt to a high point with the 1981 classics The Howling and An AmericanWerewolf in London.
The spirit of those films is injected into the bloodstream of Werewolves
On the second appearance of a global supermoon that triggered a worldwide event, turning millions into vicious werewolves, the world prepares for neighbors and loved ones to become snarling, flesh-ripping monsters.
Directed by Steven C. Miller from a screenplay by Matthew Kennedy the film melds high-tension action, neighborhood-invasion thrills, and character-rich adventure pivoting around scientist and ex-soldier Dr. Wesley Marshall and ups the ante on the genre, boasting stunning set pieces, a winning cast, and creature design and cool throwback-style practical special effects.
Boasting propulsive action and credible practical effects reminiscent of 1980s horror high-marks, Werewolves blends classic horror, action-adventure, and creepy contagion terror to spawn a new take on the fearsome beasts that have long feasted on our imagination.
“I’m a kid of the 1980s, and so since I grew up with those kind of practical effects in horror action films, I definitely wanted that in Werewolves,” says Miller, who notes proudly that he was born in the “Great Werewolf Movie Year” of 1981, when The Howling, An American Werewolf in London, and the Albert Finney-starring flick Wolfen opened to acclaim. “That was 100 percent what we were going for with this movie.”
“This movie respects the audience, it respects genre fans, and it respects horror-film history,” says producer and industry veteran Myles Nestel. “We all know where the genre has gone and where we’d like it to go. This movie isn’t a rehash of things people have seen before. We’re trying to do something unique, and something horror fans will respond to.”
“I love slow-burn werewolf movies, but this movie is definitely not that — this is in-your-face from the start,” says Miller. “The action keeps hitting you. We don’t let off the gas, ever. And there are moments, including in the opening, that have a much bigger feeling, with more scope to the action. It really amps up what we’re trying to get the werewolves to do in the film.”
As Nestel describes it, “Werewolves is almost punk in the energy it brings to the screen.”
“In addition to the practical effects and creatures and all of the action, there’s also this idea in the story that the people who were werewolves during the previous supermoon and survived, they’re almost like addicts — they need to change again,” says Nestel.
“They want to turn but can’t, and so as the new supermoon arrives, there’s a question of, what will happen when they’re werewolves again? They have stretch marks and scars on them from when they became werewolves and then turned back, so there are all these little subtexts throughout the movie.”
Says Miller, “I think a lot of times, especially in more recent werewolf films, the werewolf sort of gets left in the background in terms of the thrills or the unique feel of the creature. In making this movie, I thought, ‘Okay, this movie definitely has an ’80s vibe to it, so I’m going to make sure that we’ll see straight-up, practical-effect transformations.’ I wanted to make sure it felt intense — that was my first goal.”
Adds Nestel, “It was never a debate about whether this film would be CGI or practical effects. It was always going to be practical. It’s an indie film, but we wanted to try and put the best practical effects on film and wanted to do it with the best in the world. And since we were creating a ‘werewolf apocalypse’ and wanted the film to feel tactile, that was the right route to go. We want viewers to feel that these werewolves are living, feeling, breathing creatures, and you get a better sense of that with practical effects. You sense you could reach out and touch them. We made about six werewolf suits and we we hired you know the best creature players in the business to to be in those suits. Every step of the design process was the right choice.”
Miller, whose directorial credits include action hits including Line of Duty, Escape Plan 2: Hades, First Kill, and Marauders, knew what he wanted from the get-go, says Nestel.
“As a filmmaker, Steven has everything in his head before he shoots — we of course storyboard, but he just knows what he wants,” says Nestel. “He always wants to keep the camera moving to enable a kineticism. Werewolves will take Steven to new levels. We already have a sequel set, and maybe a whole universe we’ll build out.”
In the horror-thriller Werewolves a supermoon event triggers a latent gene in every human on the planet, turning anyone who entered the moonlight into a werewolf for that one night. Chaos ensued and close to a billion people died. Now, a year later, the Supermoon is back. Two scientists try to stop a mutation that turns people into werewolves after being touched by a super-moon the year before. Steven C. Miller directs from a script by Matthew Kennedy. Starring Frank Grillo, Katrina Law, Ilfenesh Hadera, Lou Diamond Phillips
Hair-raising special effects
“I was looking at classics like An American Werewolf in London and The Howling, obviously, and a movie called Silver Bullet that has a sense of a community fighting back against a werewolf, and also a terrific werewolf film set in Scotland called Dog Soldiers — but I was really looking at how the werewolves moved in those films,” explains Miller. “We looked at all kinds of horror movies in general just for context and what those movies felt like.”
“I wasn’t trying to reinvent the wheel in terms of werewolf design,” says Miller. “But I did think that audiences might have forgotten what werewolves actually look like because we’ve seen so many recent werewolf films use some unexciting CGI. So, I really went into the movie thinking that a lot of audiences actually haven’t seen practical-effect werewolves like this, certainly not recently. I wasn’t really trying to reinvent the look as much as I wanted to try and update it a bit, make it feel cool again, and give it to its own aesthetic — to give it things that would make these werewolves even more menacing.”
“It was important to me to make sure that these creatures felt big and felt terrifying and to not show too much of them,” adds Miller. “Sometimes it was just showing them in silhouette or maybe just putting them next to a human being to show how big the werewolves actually are.”
Says Nestel, “Steven and I were right there in terms of approving every single stage of the werewolves, what they looked like, how they would move, everything. One thing Steven said early on that was a huge addition, was that we should have some of the werewolves still have remnants of clothing on them — little things that make each one unique and you know who there were in some cases before they were transformed.
That way, the werewolves sort of retained part of the human beings they were, even though they’re horrific animals now.”
“We were really trying to make the movie gritty, so audiences would feel like they just stepped into an ’80s blockbuster,” says Miller. “When you’re dealing with monster movies, it is so important that they feel alive, because even if they look great when they’re built, if they get on set and they don’t come alive, it won’t work. The effects artists we had were in communication with the production design team and the lighting team constantly — and sometimes it’s the littlest things that make them realistic. Even spritzing the puppets and animatronics with water! We had many different departments working together to create a fun, exciting creature design.”
To makes the rampaging, fanged beasts of Werewolves meet the standard of classic horror flicks but also bring something fresh to the screen, Miller and cinematographer Brandon Cox worked with a top crew including Richard Mayberry (Painter/Creature Effects), Ricky Diadone (Key Makeup Artist), Peter Murphy (Sculptor and Painter for Creature Effects), Marielena Ramirez (Makeup Department Head), Jen Roomes (Painter & Fabricator/Creature Effects) and Sara Villareal (Special Makeup Effects Artist) — all of whom used their artistry to place the action in stark and memorable sets from production designer Tyler Bishop Harron.
