Werewolf: The Beast Among Us (2012)

Directed by Louis Morneau. Starring Guy Wilson, Ed Quinn, Adam Croasdell, Stephen Rea, Rachel DiPillo, Nia Peeples, Steven Bauer, Ana Ularu, Florin Piersic Jr., Emile Hostina. [R]

By-the-numbers action-horror yarn, originally conceived as a sequel to the 2010 remake of The Wolf Man, invents another one of those 19th-century European villages plagued by an undetermined monster until help arrives. In this case—if the title wasn’t a dead giveaway—it’s a werewolf, and locals are suspicious of one another while lycanthrope bounty hunters show up in packs from the outside world, armed with their little toys, techniques and tricks to capture and slay the slavering beasts (business must be booming in the region for the hunters to afford so much fancy equipment and richly-oiled leather duds). As superficial and predictable as it sounds, it’s competently made for its type, at least, and doesn’t overdo the phony effects the way something like the stylistically-similar Van Helsing did. No need to guess who among the townsfolk is the werewolf, or who among the hunters is more than he or she says they are—you’ll know in ten minutes or less. A fast-moving assembly line of clichés with some handsome Romanian locations, as forgettable as any other anachronistic exercise in the form. Skipped a theatrical release and went straight to DVD.

37/100