Movie Thoughts: Wolf Town (2011)

• Released: 28 Februari 2011
• Directed by: Roel Reiné
• Running time: 1 h 30 min
• Rating 2/5

Synopsis

Four teenagers go to explore an abandoned mining town. Well, abandoned, safe for a pack of man-eating wolves.

My Thoughts

I don't often watch horror or thriller movies, so this is definitely out of my comfort zone. However, I can safely say I was disappointed. Quite immensely.

So I will give it credit where that's due: it's not incompetently shot. The acting was decent and so were the sets. Heck, I also appreciate the fact that they got wolf-looking wolfdogs for this movie. But that's where my praise for this thing ends.

First of all, the characters. They're all unlikable. Kyle is the generic main character who wants to get the girl, and I forgot the names of the others, but they honestly just boil down to "Jock-type character", "Chubby best friend" and "Love Interest". I really thought I'd start caring for any of them throughout this thing, but I seriously felt myself rooting more for the wolves than any of these assholes. They are so mean towards one another and just come off as so unlikable, which is a problem when these are your main characters the audience is supposed to care about. Two of them also die but I felt no emotion when they did. 

This movie also expects me to buy a ridiculous amount of things regarding wolves. Okay, so let's set the fact that this is yet another movie needlessly perpetuating  the myth that wolves will actively hunt humans (this won't happen in real life unless they're possibly rabid or starving, the reason for the pack hunting people in the movie was never given except possibly that the previous residents were "too greedy"), it just comes off as absolutely insane regarding their wolf logics.

It expects us to buy that wolves know how cars function and can successfully disable them (despite the last people that left the city having left before cars were invented). It expects us to believe that wolves can scent cell phones and will steal them just to fuck with people. We're supposed to buy that they know what dynamite is and how it works, too. 

There's also other ridiculous things in the movie, such as a tractor in this supposedly gold rush-era village. The wolves, rather than attacking, often just stand around snarling at people for minutes rather than striking. When Best Friend Character is horribly injured, nobody even thinks of bandaging his wounds. 

Then there's the ending. Which, there really isn't one. Kyle and Love Interest scare off a wolf with dynamite and then just leave. Then the film ends. No resolution, no showing how exactly they got out of there with their car busted in the middle of nowhere. We're just supposed to believe they somehow made it out alive. What a dumb ending. 

It's also very distracting that they could clearly only get three wolves for this movie. They never appear in a shot with more than three, when we're supposed to believe this is a pack of ravenous beasts. Lame.

So, yeah, this was one horribly dumb movie. If you like wolves, it needlessly demonizes them, so don't even watch it for that like I did. The rest isn't salvageable.