Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2020
Images from the Internet
Night Howl
Directed by Michael Taylor Pritt
Fun Time Productions / Wild Eye Releasing / MVD
Entertainment
75 minutes, 2017 / 2020
“It’s a family affair….”
– Sly Stone
Zombies are everywhere
these days. So are evil clowns and masked serial killers (both mortal and im-).
Things go in cycles, like the moon. Which brings us to werewolves. While there have
been some lycan films of late, like Bonehill Road (2017) and The
Snarling (2018) – sorry, I’m not counting mainstream crossover tripe like
the Twilight or Underworld franchises – this particular subgenre
is generally ill represented, in my opinion, so I’m happy to see a new indie
wolfie flick pop up.
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| Michael Taylor Pritt |
Before even starting
on the film proper, I believe it’s important to note that this truly is a
family output, both in the story and behind and in front of the camera. So, let’s
start with the latter. Fun time Productions is truly clan cinema. In front,
there’s Michael Taylor Pritt, who stars in the film, wrote, edited and directed
it; his mom Tracy Pritt who plays his mom; and Shandi Rae Pritt, who plays a receptionist.
Between them they also handle multiple backstage tasks, including cinematography,
make-up and script supervision, among many others. All three are also Executive
Producers.
Right in the prologue,
we are introduced to the hairy beast, who is costume rather than CGI, I’m happy
to say. Considering the micro-budget this is built on, it looks surprisingly
good. Mama is mauled and the little kid grows up to be our hero, photographer Kaci
(the director), possibly suffering from PTSD, maybe lycanthropy, or is it all
in his head? It’s fun to guess throughout the film, as I am sure you/we all do.
The thing that is
consistent with werewolf films more than any other creature feature, is that
the monster is represented by the Id, described on Wikipedia as “the part of
the mind in which innate instinctive impulses and primary processes are
manifest." This is also known as the animal brain, the deepest and darkest
reaches that reacts with fear and violence, a refection of anger out of lack of
control.
It’s important to keep
in mind that this is a low budget, out-of-pocket kind of film, and not to
expect something that has studio backers. It’s a completely different mindset
to watch a film like this, and honestly, I had fun with it because of
that. If you check out the IMDB reviews, they tend to be either over-the-top glowing
(10/10) or completely dismal (1/10), with very little falling between. In the
past, as with here, I have found this to indicate that neither one is accurate.
Sure, this isn’t Kubrick, but it’s important to remember what early Cronenberg or
Craven was like, with wooden acting and scripts that sometimes make you scratch
your head in “what were they even thinking by doing that?” moments. But more
on that later.
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| Alana Mullins |
Kaci is set to do a model
shoot with potential love interest, Ema (Alana Mullins), who generally seems
more intelligent and motivated by life than Kaci. She’s a strong, smart woman
and he is kind of roaming around in his own problems. When something needs to
be done, guess which one gets the situation going? Meanwhile, people close to
Kaci are turning up mutilated. There is not a huge body count, but it’s a nice
number to keep the viewer satisfied (reminds me of a Paul Simon song…). It’s
also not overly bloody (again, that pesky budget), but what physical SFX are
used look pretty good.
Throughout the film,
the camera tends to hug close, mostly showing chest and up of characters and
action, giving a feeling of claustrophobia. There is also the use of a slight
sepia tone here and there, to give it some umph of dread. The editing is
a bit rough on occasion, but so what? There are some odd choices for minor
moments, such as more than one character vaping, or having to watch Kaci brush
his teeth (something that grosses me out more than most violent scenes).
As I said earlier,
there is a bit of wooden acting, especially with secondary characters. Kaci, on
the other hand, tends to go from really quiet to rageaholic pretty fast which
made me think that perhaps he should switch to decaf (or is that a fate worse
than lycanthropy?). Mullins comes across best on the acting front.
Some of the holes in
consistency and plot are more distracting than tripping up the story, such as Kaci’s
hair style changing in the middle of a scene around mid-film, and I wonder why
they investigate an abandoned building during the night/in the dark, when the structure
has no electricity.
The extras are a nice Gag
Reel that is short and sweet at 2 minutes. Along with the Trailer and captions,
the main one is the short film “Smile” (7 minutes) from 2018. It’s in the scary
clown subgenre, but it has a decent jump scare in it.
While there are ways
to “pretty” up the film, my one negative – and again, this is more personal
choice on my part – is that the film could have used a bit of humor scattered throughout
(The Howling did this, for example); not make it a comedy per se, but
just a couple of things to juxtaposition the fear. In all though, a decent
film.
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