Dark Moon Rising (2009)

Brilliant and touching

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Slated between fantasy/sci-fi/moderately horror this film lays an egg in pretty much all counts. It's a laughable love story between a woman and a man/wolf, a father and son curse and eventual showdown. The screenplay is mediocre at best with a lot of cussing in the dialogue. I was shocked well known actor Chris Mulkey and actress/singer Maria Conchita Alonso signed on for this. Alonso's character as Sherriff is poorly acted and makes no real sense for her being there. Throw in Sid Haig who is known for non-conforming roles and he was fun to see. The music score was slightly misplaced in some scenes but not overly bad. Now the actual werewolves creature is poorly designed, contrasting in how they transform is laughable. No true CGI involvement. I give it a 4 based on scenery alone.

The first thing you notice while watching DARK MOON RISING, a would-be werewolf-themed horror film made on a very low budget, is that it's an open rip-off of TWILIGHT that favours romance over horror content. It's a trailer trash-style film that features rubbish lead actors and poor writing throughout. The horror content is virtually nil and the direction is bad with lots of close-up shots and little varying to break up the tedium. Only the virtue of various slumming-it stars keeps it watchable: in support we get THE RUNNING MAN'S Maria Conchita Alonso as the town sheriff; Max Ryan as a heavy; Billy Drago as his usual sinister character; Sid Haig in a one-scene cameo; plus a minor role for the reliable interesting Chris Mulkey, who appeared in FIRST BLOOD. A shame it's such a dud.

After a mysterious drifter arrives in town, a woman's burgeoning romance with him becomes threatened when he reveals the deadly curse he falls under and must try to protect her from more of his own kind ravaging the town.This one wasn't as bad as it could've been as it turned out quite enjoyable. One of the biggest pluses here is the fact that this one manages to really overwhelm with how brutal and vicious the werewolves really are here with this one really getting the most out of it's scenes. Attacking with ferocity and remorselessness, the way a true werewolf should attack in such situations, that leaves this with plenty of vicious and brutal attacks that have people with their faces and chests clawed to pieces, hands bitten off, flesh torn into and devoured and even claw impalings that are quite gruesome and bloody which works quite well here. This also causes many of the attacks to come off as rather chilling and suspenseful with the usage of the werewolf to really toy with his victims here and then go in for the kill so the ambush at the father's house, the police station encounter and the encounter at the car-lot all come off as quite chilling and enjoyable. The big action scene, which is the town's shootout with the werewolf in the desert which devolves into the main brawl between the two werewolves in a brutal, vicious and bloody sequence that eschews spectacle to go for pure carnal brutality as would be the case in such a fight causes this to really become a true highlight that comes off incredibly well here with the amount of action supplementing the brutality. That's really all that works here, as otherwise this one tends to come off with a couple flaws in the fact that this one mainly centers around a romance angle that's highly derivative and ripped off from plenty of other movies. Granted, it never humanizes their bestial modes and keeps them as something to be feared throughout, but the fact remains that it still rips off other movies with the inter-species romance that tends to take up the first hour or so between the two and really causing this one to grind to a halt with it's more intense happenings occurring in such brief snippets it loses it's horror tag at times. This also causes the film to go on way too long for something as simplistic as this plot is because it has to wrap the romance into the proceedings so that it can fully tell that story specifically rather than anything else so that the rest of the movie is stretched out as a result. By using the Wolf-Man style of werewolf make-up rather than the Werewolf style which basically just gives the creatures fangs and fur around the face, it makes the creatures look somewhat laughable at times by not really trying to do anything special with their make-up and just going for the weakest look in the genre. It looks great, but it's still a poor design, and joins the other flaws here to hold this down.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Nudity.

In a small town in the countryside, the teenager Amy (Ginny Weirick) is overprotected by her widower father John (Chris Mulkey). When she meets the newcomer mechanic Dan (Chris Divecchio), they immediately fall in love for each other. Dan discloses to her that he was cursed when he was a child and turns into a werewolf in the full moon. Meanwhile the local sheriff Sam (Maria Conchita Alonso) is investigating the slaughter of people in bloodshed and the murder of several animals in the farm of Crazy Louis (Sid Haig) apparently by a wolf. Out of the blue, the outsider sheriff Charles Thibodeaux (Billy Drago) arrives in her office and tells that the responsible for the deaths is the mean Bender (Max Ryan), who killed Dan's mother and his wife among other victims many years ago. Bender calls Thibodeaux in the sheriff's office telling that he had abducted Amy and scheduling an encounter in the city ruins with his old enemy; Dan, John, Sam, Louis and Thibodeaux head to the spot for a final confrontation to end the curse. The low budget "Dark Moon Rising" is a reasonable movie about werewolf and with improvements could be better and better. The special effects are decent and the plot avoids the usual clichés. However, there are some flaws and mistakes, like for example: (1) Maria Conchita Alonso is totally miscast in the role of a sheriff, with clumsy movements with the guns. The story would work much better swapping Chris Mulkey in the role of the sheriff and Maria Conchita Alonso in the role of Amy's overprotective mother. (2) There are stupid lines, like for example when John asks Amy about the bruises in her face; she should have answered that Dan had protected her instead of the silly argument with her father. (3) The last showdown is ridiculous, since Thibodeaux should have advised the group that only silver bullet could stop Bender. (4) Also in the final confrontation, Dan was the first to convert in werewolf, but he does not attack his father that easily kills Thibodeaux and Louis. (5) Last but not the least; the conclusion is ridiculous with Dan drifting in the desert leaving his car with Amy, and the girl putting roses on the road. In accordance with the fortune teller, the curse would end with the death of Bender provided Dan has not tasted human flesh and blood. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): "Lua Negra" ("Black Moon")