Spanish Werewolf Movie Is Desperate To Be Funny, But Lacks A Sense Of Timing...

[philosoraptor42]

Game of Werewolves (2011)

I'd received a pretty strong recommendation for this from the horror movie blog "John Of The Dead". I don't always agree with "John Of The Dead", but he gives some pretty interesting recommendations. I'd probably never have watched the "Death Note" movies if it weren't for this blog.

One thing that made me want to see this movie was, as far as I could tell, a spoiler for a rather cool gag. The following image is on John of the Dead's review.

It's a funny sight of werewolves being asked to put their hands in the air. But what would it look like if the wolves followed the instruction and DID put their hands in the air?

Sadly that gag does not actually play out in the movie at all. A lot of the gags fell flat. Mark Kermode suggested that the comedy in last year's "I'm So Excited", from Pedro Almodóvar, might have been lost due to the language barrier and this was met by much scepticism. I'm similarly sceptical as to whether the humour in this would be any better from a Spanish perspective. I like plenty of foreign comedy movies such as "Goodbye Lenin", "Life Is Beautiful", "The Taste of Others", "Amelie" as well as some darkly comic movies like "The Host" and "Mother" from Joon-Ho Bong. The problem here is that, whatever language is being used, the timing is all off.

The werewolf effects are wonderful and there are some great elements here. There's clearly the potential for a much better movie. Unfortunately random asides about characters committing bestiality in their youth somehow weren't really working for me.

JohnOfTheDead refers to this as the best of the modern day werewolf flicks. I don't know if he's counting "An American Werewolf In London" in that list and, if we ignore that classic for the sake of argument, I still think that "Ginger Snaps" is still head and shoulders above the (remaining) competition. "A Game Of Werewolves" (known here in the UK as "Attack Of The Werewolves") is run of the mill and frankly dull. As a big fan of horror comedy myself I found this to be lacking both decent humour and decent atmosphere and without either of those it made for a pretty dull experience.

D-