'Werewolf Rising'

Produced by Ruthless Films, 2014's Werewolf Rising is the story of a young woman trying to overcome addiction by going back home to her her family cabin in the Arkansas forest. That's right. I chose this one strictly on the location where the film was shot and takes place. It's not often that we actually get a film set in Arkansas that was actually shot here. Arkansas is usually a double for somewhere else, which is a bit disappointing, but let's get into the film in question.

Werewolf Rising begins with what you would expect, a night scene, but unlike most werewolf films the characters we meet are a would-be rapist and his victim. Yeah, this is just the sort of thing I would like to avoid in most films but hey, if someone is going to get eaten, this guy is perfect. I would love to tell you that he becomes puppy chow but it is the unfortunate young girl that dies while the rapist survives the werewolf attack. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, a rapist werewolf loose in Arkansas. This is going to go so well.

I will say one thing about this film. They really knew how to show off the landscape. Is a werewolf film supposed to make you want to go camping? Probably not but it does. The shots during the opening credits, while not all shot in the appropriate season since the main character is wearing a coat and gloves and some of the forest shots are of a totally green landscape, are gorgeous and really show off how beautiful untouched nature is...until we get to typical Arkansas in late fall shots, that is, and our main character is finally introduced.

Emma is introduced in possibly the most annoying way possible, in a phone call that is so obviously just the actress' recorded dialog that it sounds like she is leaving a really long annoying voicemail that serves as a huge information dump. We learn everything there is to know about her in this one phone call/voicemail except for her shoe size and I'm shocked that they didn't find a way to add that in there. Still, once that stops and she finally reaches the cabin, which I have to say is incredibly typically Arkansan in nature, she isn't that bad of a character. She's just a normal woman, boring at first and probably a little stupid but normal. Seriously, strange guys walk out of the woods at night and you offer them a beer... no, girl. Just no. Most southern girls would greet them with a shotgun.

Emma proves to be one of the most illogical women I have seen in horror in quite some time for even entertaining a relationship with Johnny Lee, the mystery guy from the woods, him being an escaped convict and all. Isn't she up there to recover? Why is she getting into anything with a drug addict escapee? If I didn't know better, I would say that he's the werewolf. And if you wonder why all I'm talking about is the relationship nonsense that's because I'm thirty minutes in and have only seen a couple glimpses of Rhett the werewolf. Where's the werewolf?! I feel like Doctor Malcolm in Jurassic Park. "You are going to have... werewolves in your werewolf movie right? Hello?"

Wayne the "helpful" neighbor comes to see Emma and makes advances on her. Are all the men in this film creepy? Yes, yes they are. There is one rapist, one that's pushy, and one that is like an uncle to her at first then tries to make a pass at her. Weird people.

Anyway, back at the abandoned church where Johnny Lee stays. Johnny Lee goes inside and hears growling outside. He locks his door but has that ever stopped a werewolf? The wolf bashes down the door and we get our first look at the creature. The claws and arm look perfect but...oh my god the freaking face is an odious mess that looks like an orc mated with a tribble. What the heck was that? Ugh! I hate a crappy looking werewolf. The were-orc attacks Johnny Lee but doesn't kill him. Thanks a lot, wolf. You can't even kill the dude.

Emma, in a display of stupidity that I can't fathom, takes the nearly dead guy to her house where the relationship part of this goes crazy. If you didn't know, Johnny Lee is now a werewolf and the nice guy guise is totally gone by the next night when he gets hungry and changes into a werewolf. Not that we actually see a transformation. It is at this point in the film that our main character's brain liquifies and she leaves a safe house for a car, then a car for the house again and then goes outside ... again all with a werewolf outside. Have you ever heard too dumb to live? Yeah, that's this girl.

Now while all this is happening we are taken back to Uncle Wayne at the bar. Why? Heck if I know. He really isn't that interesting of a character anyway and isn't adding anything to the story other than drunkenly talking about Emma's hotness. Yeah, this is important. This leaves Emma to do the only rational thing to do when you are being chased by a werewolf...she downs a bottle of Bacardi like it's water and passes out on the couch. I guess they needed to remind us that she is a recovering alcoholic?

With Emma passed out, Wayne comes back and is confronted by Johnny Lee, who has not been improved by being a werewolf. If anything it made him more of an idiot. Wayne loses his mind and decides to shoot him and Emma and Rhett who has been watching this whole mess. Apparently, this werewolf has to be injured to transform because Rhett changes again off-screen and the full body creature is even worse than I thought. And that honestly describes the entire film. It is so much worse than I thought it would be.

The acting is meh. The music is annoying and whoever wrote the score had no idea when to build tension or how to. The camera work is poor especially in the interior shot and then you have the sound mixing itself which honestly I could have got better quality with my phone. Part of me wonders if they didn't film this on an iPhone actually. It's only an hour and twenty minutes but it feels like it takes hours to get going and then throws in random crap to try and pull it together. This isn't even the quality of SyFy channel films and that is saying something. I would give this one a hard pass unless you are a completionist like me and want to watch every werewolf film you can. All I can say for it is that at least it was filmed in and around Glenwood, Caddo Gap, and Hot Springs. That's something I guess.