Why Never Cry Werewolf isn’t Quite as Bad as You Might Expect

This week I decided to review Never Cry Werewolf starring Nina Dobrev. The film focuses on a teenager named Loren who begins to suspect that her new neighbor Jared, who all the ladies are drooling over, may be a werewolf. This is a made for TV film but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. What I am less tolerant for is the fact that it is borrowing a little too heavily from films like Fright Night (1985) and Disturbia. Instead of featuring a boy who watching his neighbor, it’s a girl. And instead of being a vampire, it’s a werewolf. The intro isn’t awful, however it’s not the least bit original either.

Jared seems a bit interested in Loren and that’s because she looks exactly like his dead wife. No, really, exactly.

Loren soon notices that her neighbor Jared is very strange! One night Loren is spying on Jared while he’s in the shower. While peeping on him, she notices that he shaves his hairy palms. Very weird! Another night Jared brings a prostitute back to his house and  Loren hears the woman cry out in a high pitched squeal. At first, I didn’t get how Loren knew that this random woman was a prostitute but it’s cleared up rather quickly when it made the news. From that scene alone it reminded me of  D.J. Caruso’s Disturbia. Loren soon crosses Jared’s bad side and that’s when things get really awful.

Since Jared is out to make Loren his long time boo, she’s able to get weapons with the help of her geeky friend, Steve who has a crush on her. The two are in a gun shop and Jared decides to show up with his creepy dog who starts to kill people. Crazy thing is, nobody thought to call the police. Not one person. No one. The dog turned into this demon spawn creature and all. With all this chaos going on Loren runs into a popular TV host. The two, together, go on to remind me further why this is a major rip off of Fright Night! Even though the two met by accident, Loren and Kevin Sorbo reminded me of Charley Brewster and Peter Vincent. From then on Loren must try to defend herself against Jared. She even rents a whole bunch of werewolf videos and goes crazy on Internet research on werewolves.

The music in this film was a bit annoying and highly overused. I’m not too sure who was in charge of the music or the audio cues but it was all pretty bad. Nina Dobrev did a great job although I don’t think her character was dynamic or anything new. Peter Stebbings who played Jared did an awesome job. Of course, he’s no Chris Sarandon but he had a dark, mysterious werewolf-man vibe going on. The director clearly loves horror and knows it well. I can even tell that he loves Fright Night. The effects aren’t really that fabulous however they’re not terrible. The gore is pretty much nonexistent in this film, so, hopefully you don’t expect much.

Overall, Never Cry Werewolf isn’t a bad film nor is it that spectacular. I recommend it if you’re fan of werewolf films. It’s certainly not nearly as bad as I was expecting but it’s also nothing to write home about1