Fridae

I hear that in her latest novel The Wolf Gift, Anne Rice rewrote werewolf mythology. Instead of seeing werewolves as scary, murderous, and out of control, perhaps we can see something beautiful, sensual, and empowering in them.

Well, that's one way of giving the tired old werewolf a makeover. Director Joe Nimziki has other ideas. Very tangentially based on The Howling II novel (by which we mean the only point of commonality appears to be the existence of werewolves), The Howling: Reborn is what happens when you take the basic structure for Twilight and apply it to werewolves instead.

Let's start with our protagonist, Will. His name is not Bella Edwards but he sure whines a lot about the banality of high school life, how his life is an endless vista of nothing exciting happening. And he whines in this interior monologue voiceover that goes on and on. And it doesn't stop when he meets popular girl Eliana, who may or may not be hanging out with a werewolf pack that is apparently the cool clique in school. He just whines about how beautiful she is and how unattainable she is. He still does that when he receives his werewolf gift, which happens some time in the last week of school, in between a rave party organised by the highly suspicious in-group and graduation. He continues to wallow in misery while coming to terms with his possible werewolf potential and bestial nature.

Somewhere along the line, there is a plot where werewolves (i.e. actors in very obvious rubber suits) will take over the world following a once-in-a-century Blue Moon. And oh yes. He shall be our saviour.

I'm sure for some segment of the Twilight fandom, the very low budget, straight to DVD The Howling: Reborn is decent enough even though it takes itself seriously, unlike the Twilight franchise, where every film is self-aware of its cheesiness and the actors play it for laughs.