Britflix: Howl

Werewolves movies are a rare breed, even in the horror genre. One of the more recent werewolf movies was the 2015 flick Howl.

Joe (Ed Speleers) is a train conductor who’s forced to work on a late-night train to Eastborough. Before the train reaches the final station, it gets stopped in the woods. Isolated and with no way to contact the outside world the train gets attacked by lycanthropes.

Howl was a film that had all the building blocks for a great horror film. It has a great set-up and scenario due to having a small number of random characters trapped in the middle of nowhere. It’s a similar premise to Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Dog Soldiers. It’s the type of scenario that worked as a claustrophobic horror and from a practical standpoint because a single location helps keeps the production costs down.

Howl was directed by Paul Hyett who had previously worked as a make-up artist. He worked on Neil Marshall’s films, including his werewolf flick, Dog Soldiers. Howl was Hyett’s second film as a director and it was a departure from his previous film, The Seasoning House. The Seasoning House was a grim and depressing war film, Howl was a schlocky B-movie. It did well at horror film festivals like Frightfest because, if you pardon the pun, audiences liked seeing people being thrown to the wolves.

Hyett has a good understanding of what makes the horror genre works – he should do considering how long he has worked in that genre. One of the most impactful moments of Howl was when two characters were shown to have a heart-to-heart and one of them suddenly getting killed. It showed how high the stakes were and being a good person didn’t make characters immune to death. It was better than the approach of some horror films which make all their characters unlikeable so you can cheer for their deaths.

Howl was a low-budget production, but it still managed to get a solid cast and had decent make-up effects. The werewolves were a bit more humanoid than expected but it was still refreshing to see practical effects in an age of CGI. There was plenty of blood splatter which pleased hard-core horror fans. However, the low budget resulted in the film needing a lot of talking and arguing instead of looking for solutions or ways to escapes.

The cast was filled with some recognisable faces. Besides Ed Speleers the film had Holly Weston (Hollyoaks) as a love interest, Shauna Macdonald (Filth), Hyett’s regular Rosie Day, Elliot Cowan (The Spanish Princess), and professional horror victim Sean Pertwee. Macdonald and Cowan were the most noticeable. Macdonald played a jaded commuter who has to become one of the leaders on the train, whilst Cowan was excellent as a sleaze who deserved to die. Duncan Preston and Ania Marson attempted to give the film some heart due to marriage and personal dilemma. Whilst Brett Goldstein only appeared at the beginning, he did his job well, playing a boss you would want to punch in the face.

Other cast members didn’t fare so well. Day is usually a terrific actress, but her character was written all over the place. She started off as a self-centred teenager, then became hysterical when the werewolves attack, and then getting soften when she interacts with another character. It was inconsistent. Calvin Dean seemed like a James Corden knock-off and he looked like he came from a different film. He played a football yob who ate a kebab which resulted in him having a dicky tummy.

Inconsistency was a good word to describe Howl. The film didn’t know what it wanted to be. Sometimes it played things straight and other times it was a lot goofier. As already stated there was the comedy involving the broken toilet, had a jump scare involving a chihuahua, and had some seriously shocking moments.

Howl was a film for gorehounds and fans of practical effects. But it was a minor entry in the British horror scene and it needed to be refined.