"Big Bad Wolf" (2006)

• Directed & Written by: Lance W. Dreesen
• Starring: Trevor Duke, Kimberly J. Brown, and Richard Tyson

     So many werewolf films, such little quality. If you asked me to list off the amount of good to great werewolf films, I could probably count all of them on one hand. Apart from a few classics like "The Wolf Man" and "An American Werewolf in London", most werewolf films are severely by-the-numbers, badly made, and poorly plotted. Unfortunately, "Big Bad Wolf", one of many in a huge slew of independent/direct-to-dvd werewolf films, is not an exception.
     "Big Bad Wolf" follows the adventures of Derek Crowley (Trevor Duke), a college student who has recently pledged himself to a fraternity. In order to get into the frat's social standing, he agrees to let them spend a night camping at his stepfather's secluded cabin out in the woods. Unfortunately, they just happen to arrive on the night when a werewolf is running loose! The werewolf kills all of Derek's frat friends, but Derek himself is spared when his sometime-friend, sometime-girlfriend Samantha Marche (Kimberly J. Brown) axes the wolf-man in the back. Later, when they arrive home, they conclude that Derek's abusive stepfather is the werewolf (trust me, this isn't a spoiler, they reveal this within the first 20 minutes), and they must do all they can to stop him.
     First off, the trailer and the official synopsis for this film is incredibly misleading. I went in expecting a middling werewolf slasher flick taking place in the middle of some creepy woods. The film holds good on this premise for about 15 minutes, and then the film follows Derek and Sam as they try to take down his stepfather, which turns out to be a much less interesting and fun plot for many different reasons.
     One of the worst things about this film (other than it's plotting, characterization, and dialogue) is that it has absolutely no idea what kind of movie it wants to be. At times it takes things deadly serious and gives an honest effort to try to be scary and build up suspense, but then other times it immediately rockets around in the other direction and tries to be a funny, over-the-top horror parody. It's incredibly jarring, and it cancels out any semblance of consistency or scariness. If they had went either way with the film it could have had the potential to be good (if, you know, everything else was fixed), but the fact that they went down the path of constantly flip-flopping and changing moods just took me out of the film and ruined any kind of atmosphere it was trying to build. If you want me to care about your characters, stop making them do stupid, goofy shit like hitting their heads on ceilings like they're in a fucking "Three Stooges" movie.
     And when I say the "comedy" bits are jarring, you better believe that I mean it. A good example of this was when the werewolf first attacks. At first I was thinking that the movie would go town a traditional monster movie route and the werewolf would just be menacing and silent, which would have been okay. But then, in the film, we hear a scream come from the room of one of the frat boy's girlfriends. The frat boy grabs a fire axe and beats the door down (which is very obviously made of balsa wood, by the way), and looks inside the hole to see... the werewolf fucking his "virgin" girlfriend in the ass. When the frat boy yells at the beast
that his girlfriend was a virgin, the werewolf says, in a gruff voice, "She ain't anymore!," and promptly slits the girl's throat.
     I couldn't believe what the fuck I had just seen, and that's what I'm talking about. Once you have your werewolf bumming around and spouting out one-liners like a hairy Freddy Krueger, your film loses any hope at all of being taken seriously, and I highly doubt that it was the filmmaker's intention for the movie to be completely silly, because later on, when the film actually tries to be suspenseful, it means it. The characters are completely serious and the actors play their roles with conviction. So I don't believe for a second that the film was meant to be an all-out comedy.
     Anyway, besides the terrible, uneven tone, the plot is achingly monotonous and boring. Like a lot of horror films, you'll probably be able to figure out where the plot is going fairly quickly. It's a strict, "Point A" to "Point B" plot sequence. This would be fine if the characters and dialogue had any sort of depth or competence, but the characters are total cookie-cutter archetypes, and their personalities frequently shift whenever it's convenient to the plot.
     The character of Derek is a painful nerdy stereotype who is too much of a pussy to talk back to anyone or do anything (and of course by the end of the film he's a total badass), and his friend Sam is an archetypal "female badass", with leather jackets and slutty t-shirts (and of course she and Derek end up fucking by the film's end). It all just runs together and is completely boring. Throw in some cringe-worthy dialogue ("We can take a little romantic walk in the moonlight, you know what I mean?", "Can you even walk?", "Oh, I can do a lot more than that, baby"), and some completely ridiculous plot points (Sam sucks the werewolf's dick to get a semen sample for a DNA test... I'm serious), and you have a recipe for disaster.
     There are a few moments of unintentional comedy, like the aforementioned dialogue, the teeth-grindingly awful soap opera acting, and the fact that, apparently, werewolfism also gives you the ability to teleport, as the werewolf frequently jumps around and disappears out of nowhere like the fucking Batman. As for the comedy that's actually meant to be funny? I hope you like lots and LOTS of canine-related puns. However, there is some genuinely funny dialogue. For example, when one of the frat boy's girlfriend's comments on Sam's tongue ring, she asks her if guys like it when she goes down on them. Sam responds with: "When I blow your boyfriend, you can ask him." Unfortunately, this all clashes with the potentially serious tone that the film is trying to create, and these actually funny moments are so few and far between that it's not worth sitting through the entire film for.
     If there is anything at all that is genuinely good about the film, well, there is some decent cinematography (the opening scene in a creepy swamp is a highlight), and the gore effects aren't too bad, but that isn't saying much. There's only about a quarter of practical effects in the film. Everything else is digital composites or CGI, leading to a godawful transformation sequence and some laughably fake digital fire toward the end. The werewolf itself also looks terrible, like a shag carpet with teeth.
     To it's credit, the film does try to do some interesting stuff. There is a particular scene leading up to the climax where the werewolf stepdad tries to have an honest heart-to-heart with his stepson that almost comes close to making him a sympathetic character, but after the stepson storms out in a huff he goes right back to being a wisecracking asshole villain, and whatever depth he may have been developing is dashed to the ground.
     Overall, despite some unintentional comedic elements, some decent cinematography, and some sweet, but all too short cameos from Clint Howard and David Naughton, this film is just another bit of protein in the sea of werewolf films. If you're incredibly bored, like I was when I saw this film, then I'd give it a whirl. Don't expect anything much, though. Unless you really like the idea of seeing a werewolf get a blowjob.