Project Wolf Hunting Review

Scare Value Award Winner – Best Gore Effects

Project Wolf Hunting review

Project Wolf Hunting is an unabashedly violent and bloody movie…and that’s before it becomes a completely different story. A fun time for those in need of a bit of the ultra-violence.

New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.

Streaming exclusively on Screambox May 15

Project Wolf Hunting

Directed by Kim Hong-seon

Screenplay by Kim Hong-seon

Starring Seo In-guk, Jang Dong-yoon, Choi Gwi-hwa, Park Ho-san and Jung So-min

Project Wolf Hunting Review

Project Wolf Hunting sets up an entire movie that it throws away halfway though.  This isn’t meant to be presented as a negative.  It’s a fascinating idea.  Spending this much time establishing characters and conflict…genuinely crafting a beginning and middle of a story…only to have the ending taken over by a different conflict is a bold move.  It’s also the right one. 

It would be one thing if Project Wolf Hunting was tearing up the script on bad movie…simply giving us an hour of nothing to kill time.  But it’s a fun, violent and bloody time BEFORE it changes course and becomes a different movie.  Simply following the battle between convicts and guards until the end would have been a pretty good movie in its own right.  But the movie has more respect for itself than giving us a series of unimportant scenes to fill the first half.  Things are rendered unimportant by the movie’s turn…but that’s not the same thing.  Starting with (and building) wild conflict and then destroying it in an instant turns out to be a brilliant way to elevate the stakes.

The first plot of Project Wolf Hunting involves a group of convicts breaking free on a boat and starting a bloody riot against the guards assigned to transporting them.  We meet a lot of characters on both sides of the fight…and the movie builds an outside story around the convicts plan.  Unfortunately for everyone, the ship is transporting more than prisoners.

I don’t want to get deep into the weeds on what Project Wolf Hunting becomes halfway through.  This is a non-spoiler review, after all.  But as fun as the first half of the movie is, especially for blood/gore fans…the second half is even more exciting. 

Now…that comes with a caveat.  The second half of Project Wolf Hunting is also when the movie decides to slow down a bit and give us a backstory on what’s happening.  It’s an unnecessary move.  The kind of movie it becomes doesn’t require the lore or mythos building that the story decides to give it.  In fact, if it just made the turn and raced to the finish without explanation…this would have been an unbelievably satisfying movie.  Even with the momentum occasionally stunted in the third act…its still a very good one.

The story is not the strong suit of Project Wolf Hunting.  What it is great at is unleashing chaos and letting blood fill the frame.  This is a very violent movie.  When its narrative shifts in the second half…it remains a very violent movie.  There are some excellent kills and gore effects on display.  If you love violence…this is the movie for you.  If over the top blood and gore isn’t your thing…there isn’t going to be a lot here for you.  It’s wall to wall.

Still, the amount of care that is put into developing a first half only to utterly destroy it as it becomes something new should be lauded.  It would have been so easy for Project Wolf Hunting to lazily pass time until it is ready to unleash its secret weapon.  Instead, it sets up showdowns with no intention of paying them off as expected.  Characters who take charge only to be unceremoniously discarded in glorious fashion. 

Project Wolf Hunting’s ship has a secret below deck.  One that changes the game being played above.  It is brilliantly deployed but isn’t followed up in exactly the way it should have been.  When you up the chaos on screen…stepping back to explain it isn’t the right call.  It comes very close to an all-time great turn…but instead settles for a very fun one that leaves something to be desired.  There’s probably an edit of Project Wolf Hunting that is truly great.  What we get is still very good.

Scare Value

You rarely see a movie put as much splatter on screen as Project Wolf Hunting does. You never see as much used just to set up the characters we need to know for the real story in the second half. Even its first act build is wall to wall blood and violence. Only slowing down to give some (honestly unnecessary) backstory, Project Wolf Hunting is a blast.

3.5/5

Project Wolf Hunting Link

Streaming on Screambox May 15

Rent/Buy on VOD from Vudu

Rent/Buy on VOD from Amazon

Buy on Blu-Ray from Amazon

Project Wolf Hunting Trailer

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