Werewolf by Night (2022)

I'm not up-to-speed with the "Marvel Cinematic Universe", ever since "comic book character" and "CG rendering" became strictly synonymous (or since "Cinematic Universe" became a phrase), so I wasn't aware that they started making 50-minute made-for-TV miniature comic book films, nor that Gael García Bernal from Y tu mamá también is a comic book action hero, but I'm absolutely fine with both of those things.

It was filmed in color, then desaturated to a low-contrast black-and-white, and intentionally stylized after old monster films from the 1930s. The set looks like a Hollywood set, quite intentionally I believe. The music is Marvel superhero-y big orchestra, though sparse to allow suspenseful silence, and more horror-inspired..

Ulysses, the last in the line of some monster hunting family, has died. His corpse, reanimated as a mechanical automaton, welcomes a group of monster hunters to a ceremonial hunt; whoever slays the monster in the maze gets to inherit Ulysses' magical monster-hunting gem, the Bloodstone. It's a PVP battle royale with no rules. He ends on some Cryptkeeper jokes.

The hunt is overseen by Ulysses' widowed second wife. His estranged daughter shows up to battle, despite her stepmom despising her. Gael Bernal does, too, and looks awkward and mild-mannered and out-of-place, despite being introduced as having the most kills of the group.

While all of the other monster hunters are murdering each other violently, Bernal tries hard to avoid physical conflict.

Bernal is the first to find the big killer monster, Marvel's Man-Thing, who he runs to and hugs happily. Man-Thing only speaks in grunts, but Bernal understands him, and has come to rescue him. Bernal is not any sort of warrior, doesn't know how to fight, and doesn't have a plan; he just has some explosive things and persistence.

He gets locked into a crypt with the estranged daughter, now wounded, and they form an alliance. She'll help him break the monster out, he'll get her the stone. This is exactly what happens, with that stereotypical Marvel fast-action-plus-goofy-comedy combination.

Bernal explodes when he tries to grab the Bloodstone; something that only happens to monsters. Ulysses' widow has both of them tazed and caged. Bernal passionately soliloquies about the man-vs-beast struggle, whether he is man or beast, and how he really will try not to eat her.

The widow pokes him with the Bloodstone, which involves an unnecessary amount of colorful CGI lightning and magic laser blasts, and he transitions to werewolf in a really nicely executed shadow projection scene. The people most likely to have the budget to do a decent on-screen Werewolf transition, and they wisely realized it's better not to even try.

Wolf-Bernal breaks right out of the cage and highly-choreographed superhero fights all of the palace guards and monster hunters, one-by-one.

He saves the widow for last, and loses to the bloodstone.

He dramatically doesn't kill the daughter, because of that soliloquy, and Man-Thing hops in to save her from the evil widow. Man-Thing is basically Groot.

Man-Thing and Bernal go camping and have some coffee. The movie was nicely arranged as a quick, standalone thing that can fit into a "cinematic universe" (and certainly does fit into a comic book universe) should they so please, but framed in a way that we didn't need any significant backstory or character development to get into tonight's adventure. A well-executed, big-budget monster-of-the-week. There were a bunch of characters, possibly complex ones, but we didn't need to know anything about them other than their motivation for being here in this maze tonight.