I thought there was something vaguely familiar about the title when I ran across it while scrolling through the streaming channels. Opting to tune in, that familiarity was confirmed when I saw that it was a Marvel Studios presentation, as images of the 'Werewolf by Night' comic book of the Seventies flashed across my mind. What a cool idea I thought.
The picture utilizes a lot of the old Universal style of movie making, shot almost entirely in black and white with brief flashes of red attributable to a powerful relic known as the Bloodstone, a weapon that will bestow upon its finder the leadership of the Bloodstone Family, replacing the deceased founder whose rotting corpse signaled the start of a ceremonial hunt for the object.
There's a bit of twist to the proceedings when hunter Jack Russell (Gael García Bernal) is revealed to be in league with the monster being hunted, which in turn is disclosed to be another Marvel monster character from the Seventies known as the Man-Thing. It actually looked a bit more comical than scary to this viewer, resembling a massive bearded, walking tree trunk. The Bloodstone, somehow affixed to the body of the Man-Thing named 'Ted' without explanation, was eventually recovered by Elsa Bloodstone (Laura Donnelly), daughter of the deceased patriarch, but not before its transformative power turned Jack Russell into the titled creature.
After all that though, the story stumbled to a somewhat anti-climactic ending. With Jack now a monster werewolf and 'Ted' eliminating the scheming Bloodstone matriarch Verussa (Harriet Sansom Harris), Elsa finds herself somewhere over the rainbow in what seems like an unfinished story line. Maybe that's the idea, with sequels to follow in a novel experiment by the Marvel/Disney folks to delve into the realm of horror.
The picture utilizes a lot of the old Universal style of movie making, shot almost entirely in black and white with brief flashes of red attributable to a powerful relic known as the Bloodstone, a weapon that will bestow upon its finder the leadership of the Bloodstone Family, replacing the deceased founder whose rotting corpse signaled the start of a ceremonial hunt for the object.
There's a bit of twist to the proceedings when hunter Jack Russell (Gael García Bernal) is revealed to be in league with the monster being hunted, which in turn is disclosed to be another Marvel monster character from the Seventies known as the Man-Thing. It actually looked a bit more comical than scary to this viewer, resembling a massive bearded, walking tree trunk. The Bloodstone, somehow affixed to the body of the Man-Thing named 'Ted' without explanation, was eventually recovered by Elsa Bloodstone (Laura Donnelly), daughter of the deceased patriarch, but not before its transformative power turned Jack Russell into the titled creature.
After all that though, the story stumbled to a somewhat anti-climactic ending. With Jack now a monster werewolf and 'Ted' eliminating the scheming Bloodstone matriarch Verussa (Harriet Sansom Harris), Elsa finds herself somewhere over the rainbow in what seems like an unfinished story line. Maybe that's the idea, with sequels to follow in a novel experiment by the Marvel/Disney folks to delve into the realm of horror.