Admirable film.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

For a werewolf movie, I love it! Though, it isn't perfect. Some scenes have not-so-great CGI, making it too weird and unrealistic. The highest praise I will give this movie is definitely the makeup and costume design...very cool to look at! The acting is pretty good for a direct-to-DVD-and-Blu Ray movie. The story isn't anything new, but it's decent. Sadly, what killed the movie is the aforementioned CGI; not only that, there's a certain scene that seems to be forced and could have been better without. But for the most part, I had a great time watching this movie. I really like the action scenes, the acting, and most of all, the really cool makeup and costume design!

Cayden Richards (Lucas Till) is the high school star quarterback but he is struggling with some strange changes. After a couple of incidents including transformation, he decides to runaway. He finds out that he is adopted. He befriends Wild Joe who sends him to others at Lupine Ridge. Gail Timmins (Melanie Scrofano) is the drunken bartender. He is immediately attracted to her sister Angelina Timmins (Merritt Patterson). John Tollerman (Stephen McHattie) gives him a job at his farm. Connor (Jason Momoa) is the mysterious local gang leader.The first thing one notice is that the transformation is revealed early on and the movie doesn't enjoy showing it. It doesn't have fun with the usual werewolf transformation sequence. It's possible that they don't have the expertise or the budget to do it properly. There is a lot of werewolf makeup. Most of it is fair. This is a lower budget Canadian production and strictly a cable TV movie. Still, there are possible ways to make it work better. There is no imagination in the filmmaking and the story moves too slowly. There is nothing surprising and there isn't any tension. Instead of rushing through his origins story, they should have started Cayden on the road. His past can be shown in quick flashbacks. None of it is that compelling anyways. This is not any good.

It's a pretty decent effort with maybe a bit of a surprising turn at some point during the story. Only if you watch it, without thinking too much and are open to the B-movie vibe this has. The acting is OK, if you consider what this is (comparisons with Twilight are not far off, of course, though I have no idea if the original idea was there before or if they just came up with it because of the YA thing that is exploding right now).Not literally exploding of course, but people wanting to watch fantasy stuff like that. And trying to include both genders interest can be tricky at times, but it walks that line nicely too. Don't expect too much (though it does contain a bit of violence that is above Twilight level and also McHattie, an actor who adds a lot of gravitas) and you'll be entertained enough, if you're into Lycans

The screenwriter for 'X-Men' and 'X-Men 2' casts one of the newer younger X-Men members for the lead in his 'I promise you its not Twilight for werewolves' movie. In all fairness this isn't a Twilight movie, in fact its a pretty dark menacing werewolf thriller which actually manages to provide us with a half decent Jason Momoa performance, he actually fits here.Plot wise its the usual thing, a young male isn't sure whats wrong with himself, he has lots of dark nightmares and can do unusual things, turns out he's a werewolf. The beginning of the story is narrated to us by the main character, about his early years and why he ends up running away. From there we follow this young man as he discovers a remote town chock full of werewolves, some good and some bad. He helps out a local old couple on their farm and slowly starts to learn the ways of the town, who runs the show and why and eventually how all this connects to him. Of course this wouldn't be a dark brooding mythical creature flick without a soppy love interest to heighten the tension.OK so despite the protagonist being a young, smooth faced, blonde, firm pretty boy, I promise you this isn't a Twilight-esque fantasy. For starters there is blood, gore and body parts in this, not tonnes of it but you won't be left wanting. We are very quickly introduced to a young slightly out of control werewolf who will batter the sh*t out of anyone when he gets upset, in fact he'll tear anyone limb from limb if he really gets upset.The plot builds slowly but predictably with the usual type of clichés we've all seen before. The newcomer in a strange town who faces off against the local gang of burly men. The familiar Pa and Ma Kent type scenario as the young Cayden is taken in by an old couple who just happen to own a farm, they look after him and slowly become almost like a family. Of course the old couple have a young daughter whom Cayden falls for and must rescue in the end and there is an obvious twist with the alpha antagonist and the secondary antagonist who pops up at the end...unsurprisingly.There is no new imaginative angle on werewolf lore here other than the fact that traditional methods to kill a werewolf such as silver bullets, Wolfsbane etc...don't work in this universe. But there are two kinds of werewolf here, a pure bred which was born with lycanthropy and 'the bitten' which is self explanatory, the latter are not as strong and cannot heal as well as a pure bred. As always though there is the issue of what can kill a werewolf, in this movie some wolves get killed off by gun shots, explosions or by simply getting slashed (the bitten), which seems a bit useless to me. The purebreds can survive a lot of damage with their health regeneration abilities such as falling from huge heights, suffering badly broken bones and getting beaten half to death...yet in the end the alpha baddie werewolf gets killed with a slash to the throat? eh??It is also mentioned that a werewolf can transform whenever he or she wants too, they don't have to wait for a full moon but I think they are stronger under a full moon. In this movie they can transform under strong emotional rushes such as lust or anger, hence they can change when losing control of such emotions, which can cause problems.Lets not beat around the bush anymore though, the plot is weak and in all honesty most of the characters are pretty bland and unexciting. The films comes to life when these characters change into werewolves...mainly Momoa (alpha baddie) and Till (pretty boy goodie). The makeup effects are really really good, I was totally blown away with the werewolf facial designs and bodysuits. I honesty haven't seen anything this good for a long time, the fur is realistic, the teeth, mouth, nose, eyes and claws are all tremendous looking. Till looks like a badass version of 'Teenwolf' where as Momoa looks like a tank of a werewolf! in fact he actually looks too big, almost swollen. I liked how they also incorporated human hair/facial hair into the wolf designs which does make sense as that wouldn't just disappear. The body movement of the characters in wolf mode is also impressively done with live action stunts and wire work I'm guessing, didn't look like CGI. The fights are also quite brutal and really intense, lots of biting, slashing and ripping as these guys knock chunks out of each other! full on werewolf badassery right here folks.I must also give kudos to John Pyper-Ferguson as Wild Joe, a kind of crazyass skinny, redneck one-eyed cowboy who is the backbone behind the story and turns out to be pretty badass himself. Its just a shame we didn't see more of him fighting as Momoa's band of bitten werewolves are terribly regular looking and badly cast.Most of this offers nothing new I won't lie to you, end of the day its just another chance to create awesome new hands-on werewolf effects. That's all its about really, the rest of it can fall by the wayside because its just filler until we see some lycan action. I like that they made this an adult action gore thriller and there are some lovely shots, use of lighting, editing with the fights etc...it all looks glossy and well made long story short. I love werewolf (and vampire) flicks, this obviously isn't the best werewolf movie I've seen but it was surprisingly entertaining I won't deny...most of that being down to the superb makeup prosthetics.6.5/10