- Released: October 6th, 2024
- Directed by: Ricardo Curtis, Rodrigo Perez-Castro
- Running time: 1h 31min
- Rating 2/5
Synopsis
My Thoughts
This movie kinda just looks silly going in. And yeah, it is. And not very good. It was honestly just kinda cringeworthy to watch. It's trying to do quite a few things, but doesn't really succeed at them.
First of all, the visuals. The style this movie has going on is...rough. The animals oftentimes are just proportioned super weirdly to the point they hardly look like their real-life counterparts. Gracie looks like a grayhound, not a wolf. Dan's upper body is super oversized and muscular and almost tiger-like, yet his hindquarters are super scrawny and thin, almost like those of a cheetah (he's supposed to be a cougar, by the way). Poot the miniature hippo pretty much has no legs. And don't even get me started on the design of Gracie's grandma, who can hardly be called a wolf or a canine at all. She was designed more like a cartoon human on four legs with fur than an actual animal. And this very odd style persists throughout the entire movie and it never looks right. The animation is pretty decent and the textures are good and all (even if simple), but the main style it has going on just does not work for me.
This movie can also just get. Really, really gross. The zombie animals aren't just zombies, but nope, they become these almost body-horror-like deformed gummy-like creatures that stretch and move in unnatural ways and constantly are drooling and putting their unnaturally long tongues on everything and it's all just unpleasant to watch. I get that obviously a zombie outbreak isn't a fun or good thing, but they can still make it at least somewhat tasteful for the younger target audience. Now it just looked disgusting and honestly it kinda ruined my appetite while snacking in the cinema. I genuinely don't recommend you don't watch this movie while eating because of this. I honestly have less problems eating while watching actual zombie stuff with blood and gore (e.g. The Walking Dead) than the completely over-the-top gross stuff this movie was trying to do.
Now for the two things I really don't think work about this movie. One, the relationship between Gracie and Dan. Gracie is the she-wolf who thinks she is mature and can handle everything on her own, but in reality she needs a pack and friends to help her. Dan is a hardened wild-caught cougar who starts out hating Gracie, but grows to care about her throughout the film. And while obviously their relationship isn't the worst in this film, it's just so damn predictable. I could pretty much beat by beat predict where their friendship was going throughout this film. From Gracie learning to rely on others and accept help from a "pack" (her new friends), to Dan warming up to her and befriending her, to their forced second-act breakup, to Dan coming around to help her during the climax, to their tearful goodbye. It's all just so by-the-books that I felt nothing for this relationship.
What I think this movie does far worse, though, is the message. The moral is spelled out plainly at the beginning of the movie. "Don't do everything yourself, teamwork will get you further". Okay, that's fine. A decent moral to teach the kiddies. But the thing is, the movie's final climax is kinda just...totally antithetical to this message.
Basically, once Gracie starts to rely on her team to defeat the zombie monsters and they all work together, it doesn't work. It's kinda useless and only makes the situation worse, because now all the smaller zombies combine into one giant kaiju-zombie. And then for the final resolution of the movie, the act that ends up saving everyone, it's not teamwork that saves the day. It's Gracie acting on her own that brings about the end of the apocalypse. So in the end, the moral just gets completely contradicted. Teamwork doesn't save the day, Gracie relying on herself does. And that's just stupid for a movie that has such an obvious moral it's trying to teach. I'm not opposed to media (especially those for children) having a moral or message it's trying to teach them, but then you have to make sure the rest of the movie/series/book/etc. you're making actually follows said moral and doesn't completely contradict it.
So, sigh, yeah, this is just kind of a mess of a movie. I don't hate it or anything, it's not terrible. It's just visually all over the place (and kinda gross-looking) and the relationship between the two main characters is very predictable. And the moral is just completely botched, of course.
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