This thriller/horror flick is more than your typical werewolf movie. Rich industrialist Christopher van der Veer (Max M. Brown, only film performance) and his wife Pauline (Anne Marie Pohtamo, MANHATTAN) are savagely murdered. Gritty detective Dewey Wilson (Albert Finney, TOM JONES) is assigned the case.
Helping him is forensic scientist Whittington (Gregory Hines, WHITE NIGHTS) and Rebecca Neff (Diane Venora, HEAT), an investigator for a security company that guards wealthy individuals. When strange wolf hairs show up on the victims, Dewey makes the leap that Native American activist Eddie Holt (Edward James Olmos, STAND & DELIEVER) might be involved in some supernatural way.
The film combines the police procedural with graphic horror. The underlying theme is a comment on urban sprawl’s destruction of the environment.
All the actors bring realism to the material. Olmos is really creepy. Hines is just instantly likeable in only his second film performance. The cinematography captures the right sinister mood, especially the heat vision point-of-view shots of the creatures. A heavy-handed handling of the ending is a bit too on the nose, but it still has heart. For a different spin on the werewolf and police genres, this film succeeds in creating great tension with smarts.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
