Movie Review: Werewolf By Night

Marvel's Werewolf By Night [2022]

So we got this little Marvel project that basically came out of nowhere, and I felt like it's the perfect little entry into the Halloween season. Completely coming out of nowhere and honestly feeling like a standalone movie if not for the Marvel branding at the beginning (and the token showcase of the Avengers' silhouettes), Werewolf By Night wouldn't feel out of place if you told me that this was a standalone adaptation of Marvel properties. 

Now admittedly I was already familiar with some of the characters here, which drove my excitement for the show. I was a long-term fan of Elsa Bloodstone ever since I discovered Nextwave through seeing her in a mobile game, and any Marvel fan should be passingly familiar with Man-Thing. And I wasn't actually that well-acquainted with the titular Werewolf By Night, but I did look up the issues of his run that Moon Knight debuted in. 

And... this movie is surprisingly well-done. It absolutely is not for everybody, with its homage to the old Universal Horror movies of yore, and shot almost entirely in black-and-white other than the lighting given off by the plot device known as the Bloodstone (a nice trick that they also did in Love and Thunder). We did get some colour at the end to show the MCU versions of Elsa, Man-Thing and Jack Russell, but otherwise the movie's in black-and-white, which I know pisses a lot of the younger audience off. But as someone who did go around looking for these older horror entries, this was pretty damn great for me. 

The plotline is really nothing too over-the-top once you get past the introduction of the funky concepts. There are monster-hunters in the world who go around slaying demons, monsters and the creepy-crawlies of the world... and one of the greatest, Ulysses Bloodstone, has just passed away. With the aid of a hideously morbid message embedded into a corpse like a damn gramophone and his creepy wife Verussa, Ulysses Bloodstone sets up a hunt to determine who would be the new leader of their little... coven? Cult? Organization?

And the audience is pretty much shown the main characters from the get-go. Jack Russell is who we get the most screentime of in the beginning part of the show, while the pissy Elsa Bloodstone strides in and the movie makes it pretty clear that she's not in good speaking terms with her stepmother or the rest of the organization. There is this Viking-esque guy Joshua who gets a bit more of a speaking, antagonistic role and a very pale-looking guy that looks like he's cosplaying a Lord of the Rings elf, but otherwise the rest of the hunters are just there to be killed. 

And, again, there's a fun, gothic, comic-book feel to everything going on with the fight in the maze, which also later extends to a crypt. The plot really isn't anything too shocking -- turns out that Jack Russell has infiltrated the hunt in order to free his buddy Ted, better known to the comic-book fandom as the Man-Thing. Ted is the monster that the plot device known as the Bloodstone is implanted to, and who the other monster-hunters have to slay. And all the other hunters are jerks for Elsa and Jack to avoid and kill, in one point. Elsa's backstory as someone who's basically put through parental abuse as they groomed her up to take over her father's legacy is something familiar for me, but is told rather organically throughout the movie. 

And, of course, the not-exactly-plot-twist of Jack Russell being a monster himself gets revealed to the surviving monster hunters as he gets zapped by the Bloodstone. Angry, racist Verussa, who sees all monsters as beings to be eliminated, decides to shove Elsa and Jack into a cage, and then uses the power of the Bloodstone to transform Jack into his werewolf form... at which point we do get a pretty brutal sequence. I think Marvel/D+ is using the black-and-white and the blood splatters to get away with a whole lot more brutality than they otherwise could?

We also get a pretty expected friendship moment, because Jack's sniffing of Elsa while in human form causes his mutated werewolf form to resist mauling Elsa and leave her. Man-Thing also shows up and uses his badass fire-power to burn the shit out of Verussa. The movie ends with Elsa in possession of the Bloodstone and the rest of her clan's resources... while Man-Thing plays solitaire, makes coffee for Jack and demands sushi with his grunts. 

Overall, it did admittedly run a bit long, and I actually wished that we perhaps get a bit more from Jack (beyond his charming kookiness), but there are a fair amount of fun combat scenes here, and keeping the monsters to just the two does make it a bit easier to follow and swallow the development done for all the characters involved. Pretty fun entry, if a very unusual one! 

Marvel Easter Egg Corner:

• Elsa Bloodstone is a character introduced in the 2001 Bloodstone comic-book series, as the daughter of monster-hunter Ulysses Bloodstone, but faded into obscurity until she was chosen for the tongue-in-cheek miniseries Nextwave, which established her as a British, tea-drinking, monster-shooting badass. She would then enjoy a surge in popularity as she gets featured in many video games and crossovers. 
• Man-Thing, real name Theodore 'Ted' Sallis, is one of the more iconic monsters of Marvel comics. He was a scientist who was trying to recreate the Super-Soldier Serum, but ended up being betrayed by his wife who sold him out to the terrorist organization AIM. In desperation, Ted injected himself with the imperfect serum, and crashed his car into a swamp. While not explained until later, magical forces in the swamp reacted and transformed Ted Sallis into Man-Thing, a shambling monster who is able to secret burning acid in response to negative emotions.
• ...yes, if Man-Thing's concept is somewhat similar to DC's Swamp Thing, you are absolutely correct.
• Werewolf By Night, or Jack Russell, is a comic book run that most famously introduced Moon Knight to the world, but at the time of publication capitalized on the comic book code relaxing on depicting supernatural beings like werwolves. The titular Werewolf By Night (or just 'the werewolf') is a man who discovered on his 18th birthday that he inherited the curse of the werewolf, causing him to be thrust into a world of dark monsters.