Hellhounds review.
It’s that time once again. The lunar cycle demands another Full Moon Feature. This month we’ll look at the recent release…Hellhounds. A movie with some great ideas…and iffy execution.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Hellhounds
Directed by Robert Conway
Written by Robert Conway
Starring Nathaniel Burns, Eva Hamilton, Cameron Kotecki, Dana Kippel, Daniel Link, Amelia Haberman and Anna Harr
Hellhounds Review
For this cycle’s Full Moon Feature we turn to a very recent release in the realm of werewolf horror. Hellhounds is a low budget movie with big ideas. You can probably already guess where this is going. If you are expecting another rant about writing for what you can get on the screen…well…there will be some of that. Hellhounds makes an interesting case for its “too big to shoot” conundrum. The ideas it presents are really good. Good enough to overcome its budgetary shortcomings? Maybe. But in the end a different issue ends up letting this imaginative addition to werewolf lore down anyway.
Of course, these Full Moon Features mostly concern themselves with the werewolf aspects of a film…so we’ll start there. This is where the budget really hampers things. Transformations are relegated to very fast CGI shots. People can change back and forth at will. When they do so it is a “blink and you’ll miss it” affair. From human to wolf and back in an instant. The CGI effect is not good. Keeping it as brief as possible was a good call. We don’t see any sign of a werewolf for a very long time…Hellhounds opts for a lot of talking about werewolves instead.
This is where the “write what you can shoot” discussion comes in. If you can’t shoot werewolf transformations…and large-scale shootouts (which the movie attempts) …don’t write a werewolf movie with large scale shootouts. The nature of the wolf suits means we can’t have a lot of wolf carnage. Two werewolves fight at one point…but it’s largely just two suits tumbling around partially out of frame.
Actually…that reminds me of something we need to discuss before moving on to the positives in Hellhounds. There is some distractingly bad shot composition in this movie. It’s noticeable right off the bat. Things are often framed very strangely…and cut together just as poorly. It becomes less of a problem when parts of the story start to become engaging…but it is always there to reckon with.
That’s a lot of negatives right out of the gate…so let’s transition to something a bit more positive. Hellhounds has some interesting ideas. Its werewolf lore feels unique. There’s a werewolf revenge story and werewolf bikers (Hellhounds) and werewolf hunters (Silver Bullets) … We see a newly cursed character struggle with their changes. Long standing feuds and kidnapping and a character who doesn’t realize she’s in a werewolf movie for an almost comedically long time. …there is a lot going on here.
The multiple converging stories give it some earned momentum in its final act. Mia (Dana Kippel) is looking for a man named Dave Carroll (Daniel Link). She finds a werewolf named Alias (Nathaniel Burns) who sets out on a mission of revenge. Dave Carroll (they say his full name so many times) has kidnapped some folk. Meanwhile, werewolf Lucella (Eva Hamilton) has turned Kevin (Cameron Kotecki) into a wolf and attempts to guide him through his new nature. All roads lead to Dave Carroll. Hellhounds is at its best when all its storylines begin to intersect.
From a werewolf story standpoint…there are big positives and negatives here. Mostly…big ideas…and an inability to shoot them in a way that properly serves them. There’s probably a great novel here about rival biker gangs that hide the truth about a werewolf hunter/werewolf war. Hellhounds tries to fit a lot into a short amount of time. Too much, in fact. Because there is that other problem I mentioned.
Hellhounds feels like the second act of a movie. Or…maybe even a prequel to a movie that you haven’t seen. It leaves us with more questions than answers. As if these are characters that we should already be familiar with. This is how they arrive at the story we already knew them from. It’s a completely unsatisfying ending. The world building apparently done in service of whatever comes next. It strips the bloat down to its most interesting parts…and then says, “see you next time”. It’s an odd choice in a movie full of them. From film techniques to an inability to deliver werewolf fun to its non-ending…Hellhounds has a lot to overcome. I’d be lying if I said that its unique werewolf lore and multiple storylines don’t kind of win you over at times. I’d also be lying if I said that it was enough.
Scare Value
Hellhounds feels like a prequel to a movie that hasn’t been released. It throws lore and characters at the screen as if we should already be familiar with this world. Strong ideas on paper are undone by an inability to execute them. Transformations are a mess…there is almost no wolfy fun to be had here. Still…it kind of manages to win you over by the end. Which is good…since it seems more interested in what comes next than what happens here.
2/5
Hellhounds Links
Rent/Buy on VOD from Vudu and Amazon
