Friday, November 2, 2012

The Beast of Bray Road Review


For those of you that are new, or haven’t really checked out my site for a while, you’ll be glad to know that November 2012 is Werewolf month, and I will be looking at only werewolf movies. That’s roughly 24 – 30 movies related to t he evil creature.

Today’s pick will be our first entry into the genre. The movie is a 2005 horror movie that was based on a true story, or so they say, and features a creature so scary, that it most likely haunted a small town for a long period of time. The movie I’m talking about is The Best of Bray Road.

The movie starts off a bit slow, setting up the characters that are involved. We have the classic police force made up of locals in a small town with one transplant from the big city. He gets a lot of crap for being a “city” boy, and he has to deal with the attitudes of the town’s people as well as the department. He stumbles upon a missing person and he then starts to get notices that people are getting mauled by what appears to be a monster. It’s at around the third or fourth report that we get the inside story of what is going on, that a werewolf, the beast, is out there and has come back to seek revenge on the city that once took it out back in the 1800s.

The movie doesn’t really have much in the way of a transformation scene, nor does it do much for the genre, it just throws you (the viewer) into a small town in Wisconsin that is having problems with a werewolf and it’s up to the sheriff from out of town to stop it.

The monster is terrible. It’s absolutely obvious that there is someone in a wolf suit and it’s painfully obvious that the budget wasn’t spent on creating the monster suit, however, I didn’t expect greatness from a straight to dvd movie. The movie moves forward relatively slow after a few gorey death scenes, and by the time you’re ready to tune out the men in the audience get treated to some boobs. The skin and sin is short lived as our hero and a few helpers take their guns to the woods and try to hunt down the creature.

What seems like a straight up horror movie turns into a murder mystery in which you’re left guessing who the wolf really is. The contemporary rulebook on wolves and horror gets thrown out the window, and you have to just go with whatever is fed to you on this one as the movie dives off the deep end in the later parts of the film.

Overall, not a terrible movie, but not one of my favorites by far, but it shouldn't be a surprise since it's a straight to dvd film. It’s interesting to see what a low budget can get you, and you do get some decent acting out of Sarah Lieving and Tom Downey, but B-Movie mainstay Jeff Denton didn’t really do much to push his acting abilities. Then again, the whole movie isn’t exactly award winning. I thought it had its moments, especially with a few jump scares that even Hollywood steals from time to time. Check out the Beast of Bray Road, if you’re an ultimate fan of werewolves, otherwise, wait for something far better.

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