T’was a dark and stormy night but the atmospheric opening of this 2015 horror sets the mood for a tense ride aboard the last train from London. As a full moon peaks from behind the clouds, the train hits something on the track and screeches to a halt in a darkened forest.
No werewolf film is complete without an early and grizzly death and it’s the train driver (Sean Pertwee in an all-too-short cameo) who cops it when he checks the line, leaving the late night passengers stranded and bickering.
Ed Speleers (Downton Abbey) stars as the young ticket inspector who must up his game and lead the passengers into the night to walk to the nearest station. It’s not long though before they realise that something nasty lurks in the woods and, soon after, back inside the train with them.
It’s hard to be unique in a werewolf film. Since An American Werewolf in London back in the early 1980s, it’s hard to think of any creature feature of this ilk that’s added something notable to the genre. Writers Mark Huckerby and Nick Ostler provide a refreshing, claustrophobic setting but that’s about all. Their range of characters is expected and the outcome is easily guessed from the beginning, although they do tell it well.
We find ourselves wishing some of the more annoying characters will be next on the menu but Director Paul Hyett keeps us engaged and entertained despite almost everyone being unlikeable or pitiful. Thankfully, too, he uses the darkness for effect rather than to obscure the action. His creatures, courtesy of a talent visual effects team, do offer some surprise with a humanoid look that adds to their grotesqueness.
While not being ridiculously gory, there’s enough severed limbs, blood and violence to keep anyone’s bloodlust content, even when that bloodlust in increased twofold by the annoying characters. Perhaps the most horrifying element of this film however, is the vicious inability of the stranded passengers to get along under pressure.
It may not be an American werewolf in London this time but Howl still has teeth sharp enough to keep you on edge.
Reviewed by Rod Lewis
Twitter: @StrtegicRetweet
Rating out of 10: 7
Howl will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on 23 March 2016.
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