This may not be the worst movie I’ve seen, but it could be. Sporting the intellect of a mid-80s slasher with bad FX, DarkWolf has all the worst aspects of a TV movie, but without the epic scope. It is so inept that the lesbian photo shoot/techno music video/brutal murder scene at the center is boring. Yes: nude girls kissing, made boring. So boring, I fast-forwarded through most of it.
Full disclosure: I skipped through most of the film. DarkWolf is ninety-three minutes long, and I watched it for an hour. Thanks to copious nudity and so-so acting, the first ten minutes were OK, but I had to speed it up. (My DVD player can show the subtitles while fast-forwarding.) Unfortunately, I couldn’t take it, so I skipped here and there, looking for something of note.
There are werewolves, and they do bad things. That’s the plot. Only, the synopsis makes it sound more interesting than it is. We have a werewolf, a werewolf matriarch, and a DarkWolf (so called because he’s dark, and a biker) who is a hybrid of a Saxon knight, and . . . look, it sucks. Girls go wild, werewolves kill (very poorly), and the dialogue reeks.
Long review short. There is nothing of interest here. The performances are dull, empty, and witless. The only standout is Samaire Armstrong. As the matriarch, she has charm to spare, and in a way, she is more real than the Playboy rejects who fill out the rest of the cast. Obviously, she has higher aspirations than DarkWolf: She is the only female (barring Tippi Hedran and Jaime Bergman) who stays fully clothed. This is the result of a non-nudity clause in her contract, since she tears off her shirt a couple of times, and I doubt that the resulting lack of breasts is due to the good taste of the filmmakers.
DarkWolf has the worst CG I have ever seen in a movie. The sub-’93 computer-game cut-scene graphics make DarkWolf look like a bear, and the transformation scenes are the worst on record. A 3D game has more reality than this.
The casting of Tippi Hedran (who is famous for being attacked by birds in The Birds, and for being attacked by Sean Connery in Marnie) is an attempt to place DarkWolf in some kind of tradition. (Like Dee Wallace-Stone in The Frighteners.) That they thought Hedran would give this roach motel of a movie some sort of credibility is the saddest part. Watch it not, please.
