Review of Bad Moon (1996) by Sebastian S — 09 Feb 2010

While traveling the world with his wife a man is bitten by a werewolf. With his wife dead and his life in ruins, Ted decides to move back to the U.S. to be with his sister Janet and her son Brett, hoping to cure the curse that has befallen him. But Thor, Janet's German Shepherd, is more than aware of Ted's curse and intends to protect his family no matter what.

I was actually a bit surprised by this one. I expected much less than what I received quality-wise. Not to say this is a great film in the least, but the negative hype is over-the-top. It's a decent little story, despite starting out in the so-campy-it's-past-cliche opening. But even that scene was done decently. The real problem with this film is the acting and the script. They're each only half-good, and they only insult one another. Either a good line is spoken poorly, or a bad line is spoken better than it deserves. Mariel Hemingway feels like she's really phoning in her performance most of the time, and Brett (Dennis The Menace's Mason Gamble) barely has a character at all. But Michael Pare does a pretty good job as Ted. And I know this because the character was flip-floppily written and he did well anyway. The werewolf left a bit to be desired, but it wasn't any worse than the other non-CG werewolves. It was a bit frightening. The actual effects were also only half-good, as there were only two real instances and only one was decent. I could really feel there was so much depth to the characters that wasn't explored due to the poor acting and script, as this was based on a book. Do I really need to ask if it's a bad thing that the dog does better than two of the three actors? It was an interesting idea, making the dog more or less the main character, but like the rest of the film they really only put forth half of the effort. At times you could really feel for the Thor (actually named Primo), but they never really went the distance with the concept. And coming it at only about 90 minutes, it's not such a bad werewolf/horror film. Compared to anything else it's trash, but what horror film isn't? Overall it's a short little werewolf tension-builder that is defused by the half-good acting and script. The werewolf suit was decent for a 90's flick, and the werewolf himself really brought his best to the part and it showed. But the characters just aren't fleshed out enough, the scares are minimal and fleetingly effective, so we really have to rely on the dog to show everyone how it's done. And it had a nice little ending as well. So from me, "Bad Moon" gets 4 ass-kicking German Shepherds out of 10.

"What did you do, spit in his Alpo?".

"He just knows an old dog when he sees one.".