A British werewolf flick that tries to sell itself as a new beast when its really just a tired old dog!
Isabella Calthorpe plays Sarah Tyler, a young woman who returns home after some time setting up a new life for herself in America and ends up trying to survive the night alongside her brothers and a couple of clichéd extras when a creature breaks into the family homestead and savagely kills anything it can reach.
Calthorpe may be playing the lead but this movie is probably going to be seen by fans of either UK teen-soap Hollyoaks (Gemma Atkinson also appears and is well-known from that show) or the Harry Potter franchise (Tom Felton, who plays Draco Malfoy, gets to be a bit of a lad here) or, indeed, both.
Director Jonathan Glendening, and writer Adam Phillips, clearly tried to make something a little bit fresh and different but somehow managed to make every wrong decision possible. The main actors, with the exception of Calthorpe and Atkinson, are all either lacking talent or hampered by the annoying characters they have to portray. The appearance of John Lynch, as a man who local police bring in to help respond to a call about some wild animal, brings about the possibility of something interesting but then leads to nothing. And as for Felton, poor Tom Felton. Clearly relishing not having to stand around while scowling and being blonde, he is asked to really pile on the “laddish” banter and it just doesn’t work. Having Draco Malfoy swearing and recounting sexual encounters isn’t the way to start moving away from being typecast and it’s a shame that Felton tried to break away from the world of Hogwarts with this inferior creature feature.
The first act introduces us to all the characters, none of them we really want to spend time with, while the middle section leads us through some poorly executed thrills and the least said about the final reel the better. A couple of twists and last-minute “revelations” are supposed to make you feel better about the mediocre dross you’ve just sat through but everything is far too predictable. And you won’t care enough about the few moments that may actually surprise you.
DIRECTOR: JONATHAN GLENDENING
STARS: ISABELLA CALTHORPE, GEMMA ATKINSON, JOHN LYNCH, TOM FELTON
RUNTIME: 90 MINS APPROX
COUNTRY: UK
Film Rating: 
