Blood Moon (2014)

WOLFtober is over, but I'm sick, so how about some more werewolf garbage? A werewolf western taking place in 1887, in particular, as I was on the hunt for a werewolf western. I'm surprised this isn't a common crossover, but this film seems to be the only one. And it's british! 1887 seems pretty late for a wild west setting, but it's technically valid. Our dusty Colorado mining town is actually Laredo Wild West Town, outside of London. There's a full red moon in the night sky, and an old miner's throat is slashed open by an unseen beast's claws to kick us off.

In the morning, there's a bank robbery, because the wild west, and both of the bank men are shot for their dumb reactions. Most of the cast is poached straight from Midsomer Murders, and that doesn't make me want to watch Midsomer Murders. It is established that there are two well-known bank robbers terrorizing the state. A Japanese woman, cast as a drunk Native American, is hired as a bounty hunter by the marshal. She suddenly starts talking about the legend of skinwalkers, but I missed why because the script is pretty idiotic. She asks him if he has any silver bullets, and refuses to tell him why.

Elsewhere, Sarah and Jake, some newly-married young city folk, are riding on a nearly-full stagecoach where everybody sounds more like millenials than cowboys. Their coach is stopped by a horseless cowboy named Calhoun who pays an extortionate rate to hop aboard, and dramatically denies to say where he's from or where he's going. They stop in a literal one-horse town called Pine Flats, and find nothing but the opening scene's eviscerated miner. Calhoun hoarsely utters some crap about myths and legends. They have a eulogy for the dead stranger, but a bunch of them get sniped by the bank robbers and the rest held hostage.

The robbers have to spend a bunch of time establishing themselves as really no-good naughty fellows, but none of the actors are capable of delivering this stream of clichés in a halfway decent manner, and it's reminding me more of The Room than There Will Be Blood. When they tire of running through western outlaw clichés, they switch over the the bank-robbers-with-hostages clichés. The blood-red full moon is up in the afternoon sky, and hopefully we'll get a different type of Dog Day Afternoon.

The bank robbers ask Calhoun if he's ever been to Wichita, and the music gets dramatic. They give a sad backstory about a gun slingin' preacher man who sold his soul to the devil to be the quickest on the draw. They accuse him of being just such a man, but then don't do anything about it. Instead, they start arguing about whether the howling outside is a skinwalker. The extremely slow, atmospheric rumble of the soundtrack is the only consistently pleasant thing about the film. The hostages nonchalantly overpower the bank robbers in a brief and anticlimactic uprising, and transition inexplicably abruptly to a short-lived and out-of-place love interest scene between Calhoun and the sensual saloon woman.

Back in the big town, our British-Japanese-Native-American is trying in vain to build suspense through cryptic legends and dream interpretation. Oh, how she and the marshal struggle to have a believable back-and-forth. They go on a a horseback ride instead, which is a relief, because the horses are good actors. They pause to say just the dumbest, somewhat-racist shit to each other. If I were the director, I would be cutting scenes left and right. When night falls, she tells him that she's "only part skinwalker … half-human, half-skinwalker", hated by human and skinwalker alike, and then she shows him what that looks like, which is silly.

Now nighttime outside, one of them is killed and disemboweled and dragged away by an unseen beast. It should really be a seen beast, since half of the cast is standing there watching it happen, but somehow nobody identifies it. The transition from cliché kidnapper film to cliché trapped-in-a-house-with-monsters-outside film was uncomfortably sudden, and now we're basically watching Dog Soldiers in wild west clothing. A skinwalker Dog Soldiers right in through a window and hugs a woman. It stands there hugging her for a long time to give all of the actors some time to come shoot helplessly at it. There's neither a sense of violence nor fear, as these monsters and gun slingers can't muster up even one lil' lick of passion.

They split up to get candles or something, and it's tragically slow and boring instead of the desired suspenseful. The skinwalker is impervious to bullets, so they try a pitchfork, and then a lantern.

The flame of the lantern vanishes weirdly. The skinwalker seems uninjured, but runs away anyway because it's not time for the climactic resolution yet. Probably because that Japanese woman has to get here first. They head back inside for more tedium. Lacking silver bullets, Calhoun fills a shotgun directly with silver jewelry, which is actually one of the better werewolf film ideas. The gun jams.

The skinwalker kills just about everyone in a poorly edited scene, but is run over by the main town's marshal in a stagecoach. Calhoun died in the struggle, but comes back to life because he's a mysterious magic man. The shotgun works the second time for an unremarkable victory. Calhoun says he's going to California for some demon and monster hunting. They didn't forget about the Japanese woman; she's cowering in the woods alone and scared, and I truly have no idea what the point of her role was.