Werewolf by Night review: An interesting style experiment from Marvel
With Werewolf By Night, Marvel Studios have unveiled what’s essentially a Halloween special for the Disney+ network. Based on their Werewolf By Night comics, Marvel aren’t ofay with making these sorts of one-offs, but it comes with low risk. If it doesn’t work, the show can be forgotten as quickly as those Marvel One Shot shorts that used to come with DVD releases.
Running at just under an hour, Gael Garcia Bernal plays Jack, a monster hunter called to a secret meeting. A legendary hunter has died, and now a group of would-be successors are battling it out to claim a mysterious and powerful relic attached to a nightmarish beast.
As the battle royale commences, mysteries are revealed and Jack must trust one of the competitors (Laura Donnelly) in order to survive. Filmed mostly in black and white, the feature is an enthusiastic tribute to 1950s horror that takes some big risks. It’s particularly violent, for instance, with limbs flying and necks breaking, but a lack of colour tempers the gore.
Garcia Bernal has mostly stayed in independent film since Amores Perros and Y Tu Mama Tambien made him a megastar twenty years ago. He was one of the starring voices in Pixar’s Coco, but to date this is his first appearance in a big budget Hollywood setting.
He makes for a likeable hero, even if there’s not much time spared to get to know him, and he quickly builds a rapport with Donnelly, who gets more fun as the story goes on.
Werewolf By Night may end up just being streaming service filler, and certainly isn’t a must-see if you’re finding the many MCU entries hard to keep up with. However, this experiment in style could make things interesting for the long running franchise if it’s a path they continue to pursue.
Werewolf By Night is available on Disney+ from October 7th