Bullet Points: Hunter’s Moon
Sometimes you don’t need anything more than the title of a film to let you in on exactly what it might be about. Desert Kickboxer was about a former kickboxer in the desert. Lawrence of Arabia was an epic look at a legendary character in history. And Poundcakes was a collection of pornographic scenes where voluptuous women got their brains banged out. Hunter’s Moon finds itself somewhere in this same category. I had a pretty good idea that the title was referencing werewolves in some capacity but there just had to be something more, right?
Synopsis: A sheriff makes a strange discovery when he’s gets called to an orchard where three teenage sisters have been attacked by a band of young delinquents.
- Opening cameo: The film opens with a seemingly successful recluse using his good looks and strong wine to get a young college student in a precarious position. It’s made even more precarious when she realizes she has been Bill Cosby’ed and finds herself getting strangled to death and buried in the woods. What an odd way to start your film. Sean Patrick Flannery (The Boondock Saints) plays the serial killer in this scene but the next scene involving him burying the body is so clearly a double that they might as well have hired Butterbean. It’s laughably bad and he’s quickly killed off screen by something that is mostly likely our werewolf.
- Jay’s fam: I haven’t seen Jay Mohr in so many years that I forgot he even existed. Here, he is moving his family into the house on an orchard where Flannery was killing all those women. It’s presumably some time later but the most striking thing is that Jay Mohr is playing the father of the very sexy Katrina Bowden. She’s supposed to be playing a girl young enough to complain about being treated like a child but Bowden is in her 30’s in real life and I’m really starting to question the casting decisions of this film.
- Bye kids: There is nothing like moving into a new home that was once lived in by a serial killer and then leaving your three daughters there alone on the first night. The film is written by director Michael Caissie and I just don’t understand what the hell was going through his mind as he pieced together these scenes. Bowden’s character is a real whore. She flirts with every man on screen, almost daring them (more on this later) to come sex her up. Luckily for some of the local hooligans, Jay Mohr and Amanda Wyss leave their children home alone for a few of the townspeople to try to have their way with.
- The “perfect” plan: Okay, so it isn’t much of a plan, but brothers Lenny, Daryl, and Billy are all going to break into the house and steal what they can carry. A decent car and the thrill of the score embolden the three brothers to forget about any chance of escape or getting away without being recognized and they are soon caught up in a situation that seems more and more like it wasn’t their plan at all.
- Things happen: At the same time that the three unwise men are trying to get a score (in more ways than one!) a deadly creature stalks outside the house in what must be the foggiest environment in all of planet Earth. They must have spent a quarter of the budget on fog machines for this thing. No matter, the sisters and the brothers play something of a human chess game except they both appear to not understand the rules. Oh yeah, there’s still that werewolf creature growling around off screen.
- Save us Tom: Veteran actor Thomas Jane shows up to phone it in so hard that Bruce Willis gave him a standing ovation. The film attempts to give us our first twist when we find out Sheriff Jane is the not-so-proud papa of the three criminal brothers. He tries to clean up the mess for his kids again but no one ever expects there to be a bloodthirsty werewolf wandering around he orchard.
- So many questions: I watched this film despite seeing it had a 2.9 rating on IMDB. I rarely put too much stock in those ratings but this one might have actually been a bit too high. The Mohr family turns out to be some sort of family of werewolves, themselves (although no one ever turns), and this was all just a setup to get the sisters to hunt the crooks. Wow! What a terrible execution. Jay Mohr and his wife show up just in time to deliver a little of this information to us and Thomas Jane and the rest of the crooks mostly die clouded in fog or totally off screen. We also don’t get to know what was up with the werewolf. I’ve seen some real stinkers in my life but I’ve not seen such a disappointing movie starring decent actors in a long time.
The Verdict: Hunter’s Moon was a complete waste of time. The characters are terrible, the script awful, and there isn’t enough action in the film to fill a 30 second promo. The story, at least, had the hint of promise as the family moved into the old house on the orchard but somewhere it went very wrong. I wouldn’t recommend this film to anyone no matter what they were a fan of. It’s not a good horror movie, or a halfway decent action flick. It’s just sad to watch. I pulled up a couple of other reviews of the film to see if I was crazy and the first one wasn’t far off from my own feelings. Hatred confirmed….time to watch Predator, the ultimate pallet cleanser.
