Wolves
Director: David Hayter
Writer: David Hayter
Cast: Lucas Till, Stephen McHattie, Merritt Patterson, Jason Momoa, John Pyper-Ferguson, Janet-Laine Green, Melanie Scrofano
Seen on: 11.10.2021

Content Note: (mention of) rape, fascist bloodline purity stuff

Plot:
Cayden (Lucas Till) is the star of his school and things should be going great for him. But then he starts turning into a werewolf, loses control and kills his parents, who he realizes adopted him. He flees town, looking for answers and finally finds another werewolf (John Pyper-Ferguson) who points him in the direction of Lupine Ridge, a town full of wolves. Cayden hopes to find a new home and some control over his condition there. As Cayden finds a place to stay with John (Stephen McHattie) and settles into town, he meets Angel (Merritt Patterson) who runs the bar in town and whom local tough guy Connor (Jason Momoa) has his eye on.

Wolves is uninspired at best, and offensive more often than not. I was willing to overlook a lot for seeing Jason Momoa as a werewolf, but in the end, it was too much.

[SPOILERS]

Don’t get me wrong, watching Jason Momoa growl and glower his way through the film and turn into a werewolf was awesome. Absolutely here for that part of the film. Less here for the suggestion that he raped Cayden’s mother (later disproven or at least disputed), or the fact that he is about to rape Angel to procreate (a fact that the film conveniently forgets once it needs to redeem Connor).

But that entire storyline is less problematic than the fact that the werewolves can be separated by being “pure-bloods” and those turned from human into werewolf. The “pure-bloods” are, of course, stronger, faster, smarter and better at everything than the “impure ones”. Basically what this boils down to is fascist “race science”, albeit with a fantasy race and it made me extremely uncomfortable (to put it mildly).

And it’s not like the rest of the film is that awesome to make up for it. We are constantly told how awesome and great and cool Cayden is, but really, he doesn’t have a personality to speak of and doesn’t really have much to offer. He is cool because he is young, blond and male and the story needs a hero. But really, nobody in this film has any personality to speak of, so he is not alone in that.

The werewolves looked generally okay. Well, the male ones at least. The (few) female werewolves are sexy, with big boobs and long hair because it would be horrible if we had any kind of female creature that couldn’t be objectified and male-gazed on.

Overall, I just have to say that the film doesn’t really have anything to offer apart from Jason Momoa and he is way too little in the film and his role is way too crappy to really make him worth watching it.

Summarizing: skip it.