HOWL (2015)

Studio:       Alchemy
Director:    Paul Hyett
Writer:       Mark Huckerby, Nick Ostler
Producer:  Ed King, Martin Gentles
Stars:     Ed Speleers, Shauna Macdonald, Elliot Cowan, Holly Weston, Amit Shah, Rosie Day, Calvin Dean, Brett Goldstein, Sam Gittins, Ania Marson, Duncan Preston, Sean Pertwee

Review Score:

---

Summary:

Passengers stranded aboard a stalled commuter train find themselves stalked by a pack of savage creatures.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Disappointed after being passed over for a promotion to supervisor, Alpha Trax train guard Joe Griffin is assigned to work a late shift with Ellen. Passengers aboard the train include Kate, Adrian, Nina, Billy, Matthew, and elderly couple Ged and Jenny.

The train stops suddenly after hitting a deer on the tracks. The driver investigates and is killed by a werewolf.

The passengers learn from Joe that the train driver is missing. Growing increasingly agitated with the delay, the passengers compel a reluctant Joe to open the train doors so everyone can walk back to the station.

While everyone walks single file along the track in the dark, Joe finds the conductor’s gored corpse and immediately rushes everyone back to the train. A creature pursues and manages to bite Jenny’s calf when her leg is momentarily caught in the door before reentering the train car.

Another passenger, Paul, joins the group after having been stuck in the bathroom. A creature breaks a window and pulls out Nina. Joe and Billy acquire tools so everyone can fortify the train car’s access points. Jenny begins slowly mutating.

Paul uses the bathroom in an adjacent car and becomes stuck again. A creature tears its way inside the bathroom through the roof and kills Paul.

The creature then breaks into the main cabin and attacks. The passengers fight back using various items as weapons and the beast is brought down when Matthew butchers it with a fire ax. By examining the corpse, the group discovers that the creature was once human. The creature later reanimates briefly. Joe crushes the monster’s face using a fire extinguisher. More werewolves gather outside.

With Jenny in the early stages of transformation, Adrian makes a move to kill her. Ged stops Adrian and the group overpowers him, with Kate using restraints to tie up Adrian. While holding him captive, Kate recognizes Adrian as a man she once interviewed with, but he denied her a job when she rejected his sexual advances.

Billy and Matthew go outside and underneath the train to repair a leak in the fuel line and restart the engine. Matthew hears Nina shouting in the distance and investigates alone. Matthew finds Nina being devoured by a creature in a tree before he himself is surrounded and mauled by a werewolf pack.

The train starts moving with Billy still underneath it. Jenny transforms and attacks Ged, prompting Kate to free Adrian. A creature opens the train doors and Adrian kicks Kate outside to the werewolves. After killing Ged, Jenny prepares to attack Adrian, but Joe and Ellen come to the rescue.

Several creatures board the train and attack. Adrian flees outside. Billy returns and sets fire to the monsters with a Molotov cocktail. The werewolves swarm Billy, but Joe and Ellen are able to escape.

As morning breaks in the forest, Joe allows the monsters to attack him so that Ellen can escape. Ellen makes it back to the train station carrying Joe’s nametag. Joe is devoured and turned into a werewolf. Joe finds Adrian wandering in the forest and attacks him.

---

Review:

Disappointed over losing a promotion, disinterested in his job, and dismayed by an inability to court a co-worker, Joe is a mopey bloke.  His dour demeanor makes for the type of “poor me” protagonist a screenplay like Mark Huckerby and Nick Ostler’s for “Howl” assumes is sympathetic when it is more or less self-pityingly glum.

Misery loves company, though.  Joe’s dog-eat-dog day of shuffling through his shift as a train car conductor/guard sees him making acrimonious acquaintances with a whole host of similarly sullen sods.  Cranky Kate hisses an insult when Joe makes her repay a misplaced ticket’s fare.  Causeless rebel Nina fires up a cigarette while her phone pumps out tunes in the smoke-free quiet zone.  Cocky Adrian licks lips with lust aimed at anyone in a skirt and high heels.  From chubby chowderhead to bespectacled bookworm, “Howl” assembles the usual assortment of “no two are alike” personalities one might expect from an “unlikely strangers forced to survive together” premise.

In the eagerness to populate this train with clichéd characteristics, one ingredient left out of the mix is a small pinch of likability that might make even one of these people exciting or engaging.  That omission means once the stalled train strands this unlucky bunch to be stalked by a pack of savage monsters, it is less a question of who we would like to see saved, and more a matter of who would we like to die first?  Chuck in ill-timed backstory drama, e.g. Kate’s epiphany about Adrian’s identity, Nina’s sudden switch to mum-missing good girl, or Joe’s spontaneous kissing courage, and everything constituting a character arc plays like desperate development when it should be paralleling the story’s suspense.

Not that it matters much.  “Howl” is never engineered to Kool-Aid Man its way through the werewolf movie mold.  Kibosh expectations coming from cast and crew connections to Neil Marshall’s “Dog Soldiers” and “The Descent,” and “Howl” at least ranks as an average movie for an average night of horror entertainment.

Keeping the film from floating further to the top, in addition to the problem of depressing drips dotting the character roster, is director Paul Hyett’s simple satisfaction with a straightforward approach.  Hyett’s directorial debut “The Seasoning House” (review here) sunk its teeth into the psyche through feral fearlessness for unflinching savagery.  “The Seasoning House” has a ferocity that would suit “Howl” well, but this film waters down that relentlessness in order to become a more comfortably conventional mainstream movie.

A crystal ball with a cataract can foresee every scare in store.  When the creature camera creeps on a straggling passenger racing to safety, the only unanswered question is which of her limbs will be caught in the closing door as the monster approaches.  Even if you forget that a previously established character goes momentarily missing from the main group, a shot of two passengers cautiously approaching a rattling bathroom door is so curiously absent of anyone saying “help!” on one side or “is anyone in there?” on the other, that the only possible outcome is a Val Lewton sting on an “oh it’s just you” reveal.

“Howl” has more in common with a zombie siege standoff than it does with a werewolf at the door setup.  It’s an almost interesting angle on lycanthrope lore until typical tropes from that subgenre hitch a ride, too.

One passenger has a no nonsense plan for dealing with a bitten survivor clearly showing signs of eyes turning yellow while teeth morph into fangs.  In a case where maybe the script was caught unaware that makeup effects would make no mistake about the transformation taking place, characters cling to the old “maybe she just needs a doctor” chestnut of dimwitted denial inevitably leading to more than one “you should have known better” deaths.  Makes the man investigating a noise in distant, darkened woods alone and armed only with a flashlight look like a Rhodes Scholar.

Caught up in keeping its style unadventurous, “Howl” nevertheless fills the function of a standard werewolf thriller, provided no mind is paid to recycled predictability.  Some wobbly effects, such as the train miniaturized in an exterior shot and the first full look at a monster sporting a poorly-placed wig, tie additional kinks here and there.  Still, carnage and creatures are enticing enough to keep material moving no matter how loudly the script screams for a full stop.  Paul Hyett now needs the courage to put a bigger bite of originality into future projects, and aim for the sharpness of “The Seasoning House” instead of the safety of “Howl.”

Review Score:  60

---