In 1995, in the mid section of Oregon, an animal borne virus was unleashed that was eventually tagged with the name of "Hill's Fever". Now we bring you up to the present where a family at a remote farmhouse in the same area is attacked by an unseen animal, but as the night stretches on, the father, Blake Lovell (Christopher Abbott) begins to transform into something unrecognizable which slowly becomes threatening toward his wife Charlotte (Julia Garner) and their daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth). What would happen if someone you know becomes life threatening where communicating with them becomes impossible?
Others to round out the cast are Sam Jaeger as Grady Lovell, Blake's father, Benedict Hardie as Derek, Zac Chandler as young Blake, Ben Predergast as Grady Wolf, Milo Cawthorne as Man and Leigh Whannell as Dan (voice of).
This was incredibly well directed by Leigh Whannell ("Insidious: Chapter 3" '15, "Upgrade" '18, "The Invisible Man" '20) plus a short. Obviously this director knows his way around the horror genre--both directing and writing. His timing, staging and pacing, which are important ingredients, are second to none. He has more experience in the writing part of a production, as with this, but it doesn't negate from his ability to keep us on the edge of our seats. It was also written by Leigh Whannell ("Insidious" '10, "Insidious: Chapter 2" '13, "Cooties" '14, "The Mule" '14, "Insidious: Chapter 3" '15, "Insidious: The Last Key" '18, "Upgrade" '18, "The Invisible Man" '20, "Insidious: The Red Door" (story) '23) plus shorts, a video and a video game. And it was also co-written by Corbett Tuck (acting). This certainly had a chilling presentation of how this story unfolded. As with "World War Z" the premise of this was the injury by an individual occurred when an infected person would attack another and soon afterward, the transformation would begin, as opposed to it happening as a supernatural event. The one flaw I could see in this was that when the farmhouse was being attacked, the werewolf couldn't get through the wooden doors, but there were several windows that could've been smashed. But, then the film would've been rather short. And, there were a couple of places that were a bit disjointed, but one would have to look hard to see them. Definitely Whannell has the lion's share of the experience here, but obviously Tuck had pivotal input herself, even though she had no writing experience at all. The real stars here were the sound editors, Will Files and P. K. Hooker who have done fine work as was the special effects makeup by Arjen Tuiten of Arjen Productions. Kudos to them all.
If you like this franchise which is an incredible 103 years old, this is probably one of the better efforts of the genre. The actors were believable and the writing and especially the directing was crafted deftly. If you want to feel like you're right there next to the werewolf, one can see this in an IMAX format as well.
Out of 4 Stars: 3 Rated: R 103mins.
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