Thursday, July 25, 2013

2010 Horror Fest: A Mexican Werewolf In Texas: 34 Out Of 100 Stars

Rating this movie a bit high in spite of it's technical flaws, of which it has many, but which I personally forgave. Other viewers may not be so lenient.

This is a pretty low budget romp about a border town in Texas being besieged by the infamous Chupacabra.

The actual story being told that revolves around the main characters, a group of teenage friends, is solid. There is something out in the desert killing sheep, small dogs, and eventually humans. From the get go the teens are on to it as being Chupacabra, but the older folks in town write it off as a coyote.

The writing in the film all and all is not that strong, and from a technical standpoint it's pretty bad. Editing and camera work is just very good. The gore looked good except most the kill scenes occur at night and the lighting is horrendous. Add in a low grade camera and all you end up with is glimpses of blood and guts without any real idea of what's happening. You'd think people making movies would be smart enough to try and film around the shortcomings they're presented with, but not here.

The audio mix is also among the worst I've encountered as I legit had to put headphones in halfway through the movie just so I didn't have to mess with the audio constantly. No matter how high I turned the volume it was still muffled or drowned out.

The first half of the movie is all over the place as we have some killings, a bunch of idiot characters introduced, a sub plot about Americans hating Mexicans and vice versa, that sort of gets dropped right after it's brought up.

The other problem is that without fail all the adult actors are realllllly bad. Turns out the people who play the mother and father of the films teenage heroin were also the producers, so that explains that. But to say they were wooden is an understatement. I understand that the writer/director probably had no other choice then to put them in the movie, but god damn. How they couldn't look at the finished product and be embarrassed for themselves I have no idea.

The second half of the movie which focuses more on the teenagers, 3 of which are chicks, 2 cute and 1 flat out sexy, is much better, though that's not to say it's good per say. Just tighter and more efficient and not embarrassing to watch.

Like I said, the gore looked good when you could see it. Not sure if it was hidden on purpose to make it seem that way or if the technical budget just wasn't up to par, I'm guessing the later. I'd also be willing to guess that most of the adult roles were given out by the producers rather than cast, which is sort of sad but if you're trying to get finance for your film I guess you gotta do what you gotta do.

I'd watch another movie by the dude who made this cause it seems like he has some idea of what he's doing.

This Werewolf has some bite, but it's mostly just annoying bark.

No comments:

Post a Comment