First was Joe Dante. And he shot a gorgeous werewolf-movie "Howl." Nice without sarcasm. Then there was Philippe Mora. And he took two sequels to "The One." Both are unrealistically idiotic, thrashing at its most frank. But both films were good in their own way - the saying "so bad that's good" was invented as if about "Howl" 2 and 3. The audience was fighting, Maura took off. But another man took over the franchise. His name is Clive Turner. And the video era of "Woya" began.
The third “Howl” had no relation to the previous one (the second part still had a binding to the original). Turner decided to fix it and bring the franchise back to its roots. Namely, once again to film the novel by Gary Brandner. The writer did not like that Dante distorted his book, so Turner started a more accurate film adaptation. John Howf was seated in the director’s chair (this name will not say anything to an ordinary viewer, but it was Hauf who shot American Gothic). The new film adaptation/remake (call it what you like) came out with the title Howl 4: The Initial Nightmare. And, according to moviegoers, it really turned out closer to the text of Brandner. Which, of course, does not save her.
The situation is similar to the two adaptations of "The Shining". Kubrick made a cool movie, but badly twisted the book. Stephen King did not like this, he called his kamrad Mick Harris, who filmed “The Shining” again – it turned out to be a longing green, but quite carefully related to the text of King’s novel. So is "War." "Initial Nightmare" isn't as dull as "The Shining" by Mick Harris, but there's just nothing to admire about it. The plot, albeit with differences, but repeats the film by Dante. The heroine is now not a journalist, but a writer (and Dee Wallace’s charm is not in her), suffers from terrible visions (just so, she did not meet any maniac Eddie). The doctor advises her to relax in the small town of Drago. And then according to the plan - a night howl, a seducer (by no means as luxurious as Elizabeth Brooks from the first part), werewolves, investigation ...
It was filmed “War 4” on a small budget. So there will be little action. Most of the time will take endless conversation. The first werewolf will be shown as much as 59 (!) minutes, and before that the director and the cameraman will constantly hide them. Instead of the charms of a werewolf-movie, we are waiting for a long detective investigation, but ... in a film about werewolves, its outcome is usually predictable. The heroines strive to uncover a secret, the answer to which is obvious - and they all fight against it with their foreheads.
The advantages of the fourth part can be attributed to a non-standard scene of transformation. We are used to turning into a werewolf, a person grows hair, his mouth stretches out, becoming a wolf's mouth, etc. Here everything happens differently - and let it look a little idiotic, but unconventional and even creepy (children will definitely be scared). In general, as soon as Hauf stops hiding his werewolves, the film becomes more cheerful. But it only happens in the final 10 minutes, and before that – almost nothing interesting. The song is called “Something Evel, Something Dangerous.” He plays at the beginning and end of the film. That's all the pluses.
Howl 4 is a boring and completely optional remake of the first part, where literally everything turned out worse. After such adaptations, you clearly will not be worthy of the desire to read the book. Yes, the film has moved away from the fervent idioticity of the sequels from Philip Mora, now everything is very serious, there is no place for hochma and dancing Hitchcock. But they'd better keep going crazy. It was fun, and now it's just boring. Although the viewer, who just from the creations of Mora and spit, the fourth “Howl” may like.
(Roughly 21 minutes of the film)
Howl 4 (Initial Nightmare)
Everyone was disappointed after the release of this part. And I'll tell you, a tolerable (well, seriously) one-time horror movie. The Howl franchise surprised me a little, putting my hand on my heart. She's going down, naturally, but she's not in a hurry. I expected the worst.
"Initial Nightmare" has two big drawbacks. The first is a small number of werewolves in the frame. From a series where more is said than done. It is said that the budget of the film was insanely small. The time was drawn until the last, all the savor was left at the end (at least so).
The second disadvantage is the original film by Joe Dante. Initial Nightmare loses to him in many ways. I haven't read Brandner's book. Filmmakers themselves decided that “Initial Nightmare” more accurate adaptation. Though in the opening credits mentioned a few books, I like the movie from Dante a hundred times more.
It wasn't accurate, but I felt the book power (wrote even about it) through the film. I've loved it since tape. A brilliant movie, but about the “Initial nightmare” can not say that. Again husband and wife, again come to a small town, again howling outside the window. If you watched Dante, you can feel awkward déjà vu.
“Howl 4” is such a light version of the first part (or a remake). Directing (as well as acting ensemble) is much weaker, of course. But I loved the transformation of a man into a werewolf. I watched a lot of films on this subject, Hough surprised, I do not remember exactly such a transformation.
And I'm always happy when a director tries to make a serious horror movie, it's just harder than going crazy (with all sorts of Stirbs, Mora don't be offended, I love you in my own way). To make sure you understand everything, Dante's movie is a fried chicken with potatoes, Hough's movie is a diluted noodle. A-ha-ha, right, cinema for those who do not disdain.
Love your wives! P.S.
Justin Hayward's "Something Evil, Something Dangerous" is the best song ever. Turn it on for the atmosphere.
1988. Two years ago, a heavy "Voy-3" thundered and the bench was decided to fold. The franchise did not see wide screens anymore, and for fans of this series, it was decided to shoot films further, but with access to video tapes. In this situation, it is difficult to make such a conclusion that the authors of the video films have finally received freedom and can shoot based on this "Woy" anything - after all "Woy-2" and "Woy-3" have already been and, interestingly, received any rental. Therefore, it remains to think only that the series will again turn into a serious channel, only with special effects from the previous two parts. Spoiler: That's what happened.
So, here we have the horror John Hough "War-4: The Initial Nightmare". In Russia, it was desperately released by Twitter, along with the third and sixth parts. Why them? Hell knows, I wouldn't mind having another one on the disc. In any case, here we can enjoy a multi-voice voiceover (but not translation: the heroine escapes from the chase and runs to the tower, simultaneously shouting to another heroine “The tower!”, the translators confidently read “Oh Lord!”.
According to knowledgeable people, the plot of this film is a more accurate adaptation of the original novel, because in the first part, exits to other steppes were allowed. However, in the beginning, the film assures us that it is based on all three parts at once and is something new. But the plot, in fact, is reminiscent of the first "Howl" - we have the main character-writer and her husband. The writer is haunted by glitches, she decides to rent a house in the wilderness and relax there with her husband. It's time for a small party with werewolves.
Yes, many plot moves from "Woy" is here - so we have the so-called remake of the first part. Why do you even need him? Honestly, I don’t know, because it looks much duller and duller. The whole party with werewolves appears in the last 10 minutes, and before that we will just see a hairy paw, which keeps trying to attack someone. The action in the film stretches as if it does not exist at all - if there was an emphasis on the detective line, then it is as weak as one can imagine. Heroines walk, find out information about werewolves - this is all and ends.
On the line with the husband of the main character scored at all – I do not want to spoil for those who did not watch even the first part – so do without explanation. Many people here write that they are glad that the film has finally returned to the serious track (hello to me to say from the previous review that it is a pity that there are so few fans of screen madness), but where is the serious channel, if all the events were already in the first part, and here is unimaginable boredom?
But the movie could be more boring, because it can get worse. From the good I can single out only the last minutes - when there is at least some action, at least some effects and at least some scene of decomposition (for the video effectively made). Now shake all the ingredients and on the output we get a very average horror movie of the 80s, which did not claim anything and was released immediately on video. Look once and forget. Here's how to characterize "War-4".
The young writer is constantly tormented by nightmares in which a strange-looking nun comes to her, and then something similar to a wolf. Trying to find a solution to the problem, she and her husband move to a summer house, next to which there is a small town, whose residents behave strangely towards visitors. All would be fine, but nightmares begin to haunt the heroine again, and this time they are embodied in reality.
The fourth film in the werewolves series gets rid of the comedy and frank thrashiness inherent in the second and third parts, and returns to its origins in two ways. First, this plot almost exactly repeats the first film, it is not surprising - the original novel was taken as a basis, and the first film was just a remake of it. Therefore, if you suddenly notice a similarity - do not be afraid, everything is as it should be, even the line with the cheating husband has been preserved, though in a slightly different form. However, looking at this, you understand that the writers of the first film did the right thing that did not copy the plot from the book completely - the fourth film is an example of how you can make a really boring and expressionless movie.
In the 90 minutes, nothing really happens on the screen. Most of the screen time, the heroine walks, chats with residents and a friend, and every evening, hearing howling, she wonders: “Did I see it?”, and begins to investigate further. Moreover, with all this you do not notice how the final chord comes, namely the last 10 minutes, which look almost the best moments in the film, where there is everything - and a flock of werewolves (before that they were, but 1-2 pieces, in the form of a camera approaching the heroes), and action, and even worries for the main character. But this will not save you from frank boredom, endless dialogue, so if you decide to watch this movie, you can safely squander until the 80th minute - you will not lose anything, but look at where almost the entire plot of the film went.
The second way is seriousness. I was very glad to learn that the film is not some kind of banter, or pseudo-eroticism, but quite an ordinary werewolf-movie, where according to the laws of the genre we start to scare a little, and then the fun begins. It's a pity it's just in words. However, what the creators tried, so it's over the makeup - werewolves here, though a little, but they look really scary. Also impressive is the moment of slow decomposition of one of the heroes, and turning him into a werewolf after - really done competently, although a little thrashy.
"Howl 4" is a film that, although it took the first step to creating an adequate film about werewolves thanks to an interesting atmosphere and an impressive finale and makeup, but still did not surpass 1-2 films, and all the fault is the clumsy script and incomprehensible acting, as well as the minimum number of werewolves. However, looking at this film, I want to believe that it will be much better.
5 out of 10
Looking ahead, it should be noted that the film is mostly unsuccessful. But, nevertheless, there is one positive point in it that requires praise. We will look at it from the very beginning.
The fact is that the author of the previous pair of episodes frankly laughed, leaning into a frivolous horror movie, mocking the subject of werewolves. The current director John Hough (John Hough), who is not the most famous, but well worked in the profession before, offers an ideological return to the origins. His film story is based on three books by writer Gary Brandner and the plot of the original ancestor of the franchise. Before us is a woman – a writer suffering from nightmares, who with her husband will go away from the big city to a small forest village. But mental recovery will break a sinister howl with the secrets of the local community. The creator of the film moves in a completely serious direction, finally rehabilitating the stylistic flow of the whole story, wanting not to laugh with the viewer, but to intimidate him, plunging into the suspense of the situation to be in a closed society, under whose friendly shell animal nature is hidden. It's very exciting.
However, the implementation itself turned out to be an unattainable bar for the skill to play a clever detective thriller that changes its appearance into a terrible horror. Yes, the script is written out intriguingly, when paired with the heroine and her friend, we gradually dig up the true creepy gut of the town, encountering unsaid mystical elements. With all this, alas, there is a noticeable lack of plot tension. Summing up the picture is the insufferability of the “terrible” component, which very rarely appears on the screen, besides the choice of the actress for the main such a responsible part is a noticeable miss, because she lacks the lyceum energy in the presentation of emotions. They are especially important when the visual side of the production does not shine with breadth of scope, closing in the framework of a horror film purposefully released immediately on videotapes. In addition, logical simplifications prevail in the narrative, destroying the credibility of, say, a purely Hollywood incredible explosion of an ordinary car that destroyed the bell tower, as if it were some kind of fuel tanker. This scene is key!
Speaking about the technical part of the work, which is important for such tapes, it is expected to be fleeting due to the lack of funds, but is present in the climax. Let the models become simplified, but there are several werewolves, spreading the sham mouth, after savoring the stages of transformation of a person into a monster. However, not without a spoon of tar in not the highest quality barrel of honey. That is why it is necessary to reproach the director, who allowed to present some of the monsters ... ordinary dogs.
In general, even remembering the restrained format of a horror film for home viewing, which does not compete with respectable colleagues going to theaters, there will be noticeably less positive than negative nuances. It is also difficult to compete with the original according to the claimed closer embodiment of the book plot, when the weak atmospheric part does not receive the proper audience response. It is only an attempt to move away from the former gaggy black humor of the sequel and the triquel, taking the previous course of a serious genre tape.
4 out of 10
You have to go, or the forest will soon become... more terrifying.
In any film franchise, successful or not, there is always or almost always a backstory film. As a rule, such films are shot not in order to show the unprecedented facets of the world in which the action of the film takes place, but because the creators ran out of original ideas, but they still want to earn easy money. So there are no unnecessary prequels, which naturally fail in the world box office, but the money that collects the picture, as a rule, enough creators for kefir and enema. Today’s guest is a good example of that. Well, that's howl IV.
In any case, it is generally accepted that the fourth film is a prequel, but I have not found anything that would connect this film with the previous three. Yes, the action takes place in a village near London and yes werewolves as before are servants of the devil, and not just people who were cursed in time immemorial, but that’s where it ends and with the same success this film could be the prologue of “American werewolf in London” or “Silver bullet”. No, why not? And there and there are werewolves, so you can cleverly say that all the films in which lute Lycanthropes somehow connected. Well, I'm going somewhere wrong, it's just that this movie leaves an unpleasant aftertaste.
So, Mary is a young writer who, instead of writing books, is lost in the world of her own dreams and cannot distinguish between reality and fiction. And naturally, her personal psychologist advises the main character to go out of town in order to relax. And why does it seem to me that the main antagonists in such films are not maniacs with chainsaws and winged monsters, but such well-wishers who send heroes to a hospitable village so that the latter are killed there in a particularly cruel way? But let law enforcement deal with it, and I'll go back to our sheep -- uh, heroes. So, Mary and her husband come to the village, which only happens in horror films - restrained locals who look at visitors with distrust. In the forest, cries for help and wolf howls are heard, and the ghost of an old nun appears in Mary’s visions. It's time to call the corporation "Secret"!
No, of course not! After all, Mary is a writer, and writers are so eager to understand what is happening. How you doing? Mary will call her friend Janice, who was a nun for a while but then decided to leave the church because she became passionate about one of the nuns. The ghost of that nun comes to Mary in visions. Why the nun does not come to Jane in visions and look at the latter reproachfully remained a mystery behind seven seals, well, come on. Nor will Mary tell everyone, or almost everyone in the village, that she is conducting her own private investigation and will periodically poke her long nose into other people's affairs. Well, Mary, you're a fucking Miss Marple.
It would seem that if Mary told everyone what she was doing, then the life of the main character should be constantly in danger. She must find ominous notes recommending getting out of this place, she must feel the gaze of an invisible observer and finally she must try to look for both evidence and proof that something is unclean here in the city. In general, “War 4” was supposed to be a fascinating detective with a mystical bias, which in due time will be such paintings as “View” and “Crimson Rivers”, but he did not become such. Why? It's very simple. Nothing happens in this movie. Nothing at all. Characters go from side to side sometimes exchange meaningless phrases, but that’s it. Antagonists do not really appear, and there is no sense that anything terrible should happen now. Are you sitting there waiting for something to happen in this movie? A werewolves movie? No, I haven't.
Maybe then the actors will be able to enjoy something. No, they can't. For the simple reason that in this picture there are more than a dozen characters, but the creators did not bother to prescribe the characters the most important, namely, character. No, of course, we have Mary's new husband who only cares about who he can sleep with, but that was supposed to be one of the character's hallmarks, not his character. We have Mary, who is a vision in a strictly defined time frame and who doesn't look sinister. They just are. Mary may want to understand what’s going on in the city, but she doesn’t try to dig into the doctor’s papers or break into an abandoned church. How interesting! And yes, the rest of the characters are deprived of even such a small thing and all they have to do is portray furniture.
To sum up, I would like to say the following: there are no interesting and memorable characters in Voi 4, and actors behave in a largely inadequate manner. It does not have a good and well-developed plot, and the film refuses to be friends with logic. Well, in fact, a village for eight houses, which has a souvenir shop and a store selling household goods, and not a word about grocery. Who gives you food? Is the director in person? And most importantly, there is no intimidating and tense atmosphere in this film, as there is virtually nothing going on in the film. So, yes, the fourth film dropped the franchise to the bottom and the only thing left for the film is howling to the moon in a vain attempt to get out of the cloaca where it was driven by John Hough, only will it get out? I doubt it very much.
The first three films of the Howl franchise were adaptations of the corresponding novels by Gary Brandner. I have not read these novels, I will not lie, but I am sure that no one in them especially adhered to the plot of the original source. Further sequels of “Woy” are based on all the novels of the trilogy “Howl” at once, this implies that only certain ideas are borrowed from the novels of Gary Brandner.
For example, in the opening credits of Voya 4, you can see the inscription that the film is based on all three books. In fact, the material of the very first book is used to a greater extent, that is, its plot is taken as the basis of tetraquel. And if you believe the authors of the fourth part on the word, then the original plot of the original source is generally not given more attention in an example than in the picture of Joe Dante.
However, I will judge by my personal impressions. Yes, the plot of the film is painfully similar to the first “Howl”. However, the individuality of the film quickly emerges. For example, the creators of tetraquel added suspense to “Howl”. In principle, in some proportions, suspense was present in the original "Voy", but in the fourth part, the approach to it is more skilful, or something.
But, you do not have time to really immerse yourself in the whole atmosphere of the madness happening around the heroes, as the authors of the film throw sticks into the wheels. An interesting investigation seems to have begun: the main character is trying to figure out for a couple with a friend what is happening in a quiet secluded town and why a long, chilling howl is heard in the forest at night, which no one else in the town hears. But you quickly lose interest in the investigation because of the lousy implementation: somewhere they cheated, somewhere, apparently, there was not enough money - and here is a really unusual atmosphere of the film collapses before your eyes, like a house of cards.
If “Howl 4” from the beginning to the very end just frightened the viewer howl in the woods and hints at some terrible secret – the film would be a good spectacle, which could well be recommended for viewing for once. No, they want to show us the werewolves! And all would be well, but makeup leaves much to be desired. Well, to look at the German shepherds, who are given to us as werewolves, there is simply no power. Sorry, but this is too much even for the budget spectacle, which is “War 4”.
The verdict. To recommend to watch two-thirds of the film I consider stupid, so I will be eloquent: stay away from the film!
5 out of 10