Dead Howling is an independent werewolf vs zombies horror directed by John V. Soto. It also has Tom Reeve’s name attached to it, who produced 2 good werewolf movies before: Dog Soldiers and 13Hrs. The concept is unique within the genre, but it has much less action than you would expect it.
The story takes place 6 months into the zomie apocalypse. Carter is a scientist who can turn himself into a werewolf, after losing his family to zombies he finds himself lost and develops a drinking habit. While scavanging he saves 2 siblings from the zombies, Megan and Billy. They just lost their uncle and made a promise to him: to seek out a rumored sanctuary that provides safety to survivors. This gives Carter a new puprose, to help them on their journey with his abilities.
The movie is a lot like Zombieland (2009), it’s a character driven road trip story, they even got the rules, but instead they call them lessons here. The characters and their journey is enjoyable, I liked Carter a lot, but the film fails at the action. It’s sparse, which wouldn’t be inherently bad, but sadly it’s also very lackluster. Most of the kills, even the ones that you would root for to be very brutal are mostly just closeups of the werewolf’s head biting down on their limbs.
The werewolf was custom built by Russel Sharp and his team SharpFX based on the director’s John V. Soto’s sketches. It looks good, the animatronic head piece is very detailed, I most specially liked the eyes, the way they looked and moved was really awesome. Sadly they mostly just show the head even though the whole suit looks quite good for a production with limited resources. When they show it in it’s full glory you can see it retain’s Carter’s tattoo’s which is very cool.
Overall Dead Howling is an entertaining movie with a unique concept and atmosphere that I would recommend. Between the lackluster action scenes there’s an enjoyable character driven story about hope and to never give up, perhaps a sequel can improve upon its flaws.
