‘American Werewolves’ Review
Produced by Heather Moser | Directed by Seth Breedlove
I love documentaries. I will happily watch them on any subject and when made well, I’ll always enjoy them. The horror genre brings up lots of subjects that you wouldn’t think could be made into a documentary. But you’d be wrong. A film on real-life ghosts doesn’t sound so weird when you’ve watched similar movies on zombies and vampires. This time though, it was the turn of werewolves.
You might think it would be impossible to create a documentary on werewolves, and at times this really does feel like it could be a mockumentary, but there are a surprisingly large amount of people that will tell tales of their experiences with werewolves.
American Werewolves goes down the usual route that this sort of documentary goes down as we see lots of talking heads telling their stories as well as ‘re-enactments’ of what happened or images of werewolves. I will say that the werewolves in these images look surprisingly good. They are most people in outfits but they honestly look better than almost all the low-budget werewolf movies I have seen. I’m not sure if this says much about this movie, it probably says more about the low-budget films I watch! These re-enactments don’t really add a whole lot to the movie either. They are just there so we don’t get bored of random people talking for seventy-five minutes and nothing else.
There are some interesting stories. Many of them talk about being in the woods in the middle of the night and hearing noises. They do go into more detail and explain that what they saw definitely wasn’t a bear or a dog or another human. Interestingly many of the interviewees do their best not to use the term ‘werewolf’. They know how silly it might sound and they are aware of what people think if you start talking about them. But describing them without saying the actual word doesn’t make much difference and when they start talking about the ‘Dog Man’. Every interview here is with eyewitnesses, not just historians or lovers of folklore.
Although American Werewolves tries to have some creditability by having witnesses saying “they know they sound crazy but…” and spending a lot of time with the stories from a former police officer, it’s still hard to believe even the very best told tales. And when the last few moments of the film are spent with a guy that is suggesting very supernatural elements to werewolves. He doesn’t outright say it but he suggests extra-terrestrial involvement or that they come from ‘other worlds’. I’m not entirely sure what he means but I don’t think he knows either.
The suggestion that many of the missing people in America that disappear in the woods every year are because of werewolves seems a little too ridiculous. There are many many other, much more logical, reasons that people would go missing. And it’s not because they didn’t take guns with them when they went for a long walk.
If like me you could happily listen to the stories I’ve mentioned above then this is worth checking out. But if you’re looking for a serious horror documentary, you probably won’t get that here.
American Werewolves debuts on major streaming platforms on July 5th, from 1091 Pictures; including iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, Vudu and FandangoNOW.
