skybrick736
There aren't a lot of horror movies, if any, with this children's premise of having an animal be the strong, sympathetic, main lead character. No joke too, the storyline was based around the pooch, the dog having the most screen time, a defiant personality and interaction with all the characters in the movie. Although the movie feels like a kid's movie at points, it's definitely not, having a graphic sex scene and some very gory kill shots. This odd fusion of genres is probably why Bad Moon hit theaters with such moderate success.Bad Moon is also different for its incredibly short run-time of just being over eighty minutes long, it does go by quickly and scenes that are shown are meaningful. The introduction is great, starts to fall apart in the middle but eventually saves itself close to the end. What is absolutely disgusting about the film is the horrible transformation scene that is quite possibly the worst I have ever seen in a werewolf movie, it was really, really bad. Bad Moon is certainly original but by no means a great werewolf film, probably wise to skip it.
Jared Prophet
The opening is OK with Michael Paré's team being attacked by a werewolf. And then Michael Paré heads home to see his sister and her son, and their dog and the movie more or less stops at that point. It gets long and boring with nothing happening for a really long time. Mariel Hemingway is Michael Paré's sister, and she is super single with no prospects, and there isn't anyone else in the movie so there is not even the chance of a sex scene to get us through the boring part. And then when the action eventually picks up, the movie quickly becomes Lassie vs The Werewolf. And who would pay to see that. Some how this movie actually screened in theaters.
revere-7
You have a good life. Nice home, nice yard. But one day a relative comes to visit, and you know something's not right about him. You come to find out he's a werewolf. The only problem is, you're the only one who knows. And you're a dog.Werewolves are one of those monsters that come and go in films. After a decade which saw the release of many good werewolf films (the 1980s), there just weren't many films about them in the 1990s. Bad Moon is one of the few good ones that were made during this period. Not an outstanding film by any stretch, but a fun film nonetheless. It features an excellent performance by a German Shepherd as the protagonist, Thor. Worth a look if you're a fan of the genre. Probably not very exciting if you're not.
AloysiusWeasley
First off, this movie is BAD. If you're attempting to work through the entire horror section of your local Blockbuster, feel free to give this one a pass. Even if you're a big fan of werewolf movies (as I am), there are better ones to be had, such as American Werewolf in Paris, or even Cursed with Christina Ricci.On to the movie! For starters, the acting in this is horrible - I didn't care a whit for anyone in it, and was puzzling throughout the whole thing why it took them so long to suspect the brother. He acted odd as soon as he reached their house to stay, and by the time they were sitting down to dinner after Thor (the German Sheperd) was taken away, he was acting like a serial killer, only minus the charisma. The lines the kid had were trite and pathetic, and perhaps it was just me, but I found the mother's eyebrows to be quite distracting - they were abnormally dark for the hair color, and screamed "Bad dye job! Bleach me please!". One would think that was a small thing, but watch and see - the camera seems to focus on them throughout the movie, and it was truly distracting. To sum up the acting, perhaps it was the screen writer's fault, but one could pretty much predict what they were going to say a mile off, and I was pretty much hoping for a 'rocks fall, everyone dies' ending by say, the middle of the movie. Best actor was the dog who played Thor, hands down.Scare factor for this movie? 2/10. I tend to jump during scary movies, and though I felt a small bit of unease throughout the thing, there was no point where I even flinched. It's just "Oh, there's the werewolf again, whoopee." And when I say 'unease', don't think the feeling of overwhelming malice in awesome Japanese horror movies, it was a very tiny fraction of that. Personally, there were a small handful of scenes where body parts/gore were seen, and there was a stupid and pointless sex scene in the first 10 minutes (And wow, you get to see a NIPPLE, dude! Booobs!) - thus, I fail to see why this wasn't given a PG-13 rating. If a kid over 10 or 11 sees this, they're not going to be scarred for life, trust.F/X? Well, definitely not as bad as The Howling, but not really anything to write home about, either. The initial werewolf we see in the Amazon looks HORRIBLE. I'd expect to see something like that in a b-movie 70's flick. I will give a bit more credit to the transformation scene much later in the movie, (where the sister discovers her brother is the werewolf) which at least made me stop and examine it, and finally give a nod of faint approval. Definitely not the most realistic thing I've ever seen, but there was a part close to the end of it where his head is all misshapen that made me raise my eyebrows in surprise.I also had to add a more personal bit about the emotional impact of this movie, or the lack thereof. I felt bad for none of the people who were killed - there was a logger doing a survey that got whacked before we found anything about him (after ignoring the alarming sounds of a large predator nearby, Darwin at work here), and a pointless fraud who provoked Thor in an attempt to sue the family who was killed later off-screen. Apparently there were 5 or 6 hikers/logging people who were also killed when the brother was out at the lake in his Airstream. The most horrible point in the movie was where Thor was being taken away by animal control, I really felt for his attempts to get back to his family and protect him from the Bad Person among them. Everybody acts in a manner that screams "Stop doing stupid things!", and wow, am I tired of seeing that in horror movies!I found out this movie was (loosely) based on a book, so perhaps that explains why it's so bad. Apparently, most of the family was cut out (2 kids, a cat, and a father, the latter of which I was wondering the story behind throughout the movie), and the book was from the viewpoint of Thor. Sounds like this is another one where you should read the book, and skip the movie - I know I'll be hunting down the book, myself, though it may be a small chore, since it appears to be out of print. I read a short summary for it, and it positively screams to me that all the interesting bits were hacked out for no particular reason.
