John Pyper-Ferguson as Wild Joe. Wolves, the directing debut of David Hayter is a late arrival at the stampede, cast in the rural-grunge style of the True Blood television series but with retrograde gender politicsSteve Wilkie
With apologies to Allen Ginsberg's Howl, I saw the best minds of my generation (okay, maybe not the "best" and maybe not my generation, but a lot of writer-filmmakers who should know better) churning out contrived supernatural fantasies in the wake of the Twilight series.
Wolves, the directing debut of David Hayter (writer of the first two X-Men movies) is a late arrival at the stampede, cast in the rural-grunge style of the True Blood television series but with retrograde gender politics. High school jock, Cayden ( Lucas Till), discovers his superhuman strength shortly before he wakes up covered in blood near his chewed-up parents' corpses.
On the lam, he meets a cackling barfly named Wild Joe (John Pyper-Ferguson) who explains they're both werewolves before directing Cayden to the town of Lupine. There, Cayden encounters a paternal farmer (Stephen McHattie), a pretty bartender, Angelina (Merritt Patterson), and a slavering pack of hairy bikers, led by an alpha-dude leader (Jason Momoa from Game of Thrones).
The rest of the movie, about a feud between rival werewolf clans, is like a bad hangover dream of swooping cameras, staggered montages and shouty performances until at the 90-minute point (ah-whoooooo!), when Wolves tales off with a sequel-ready coda.