Blood Moon

This is supposed to be a B movie, werewolf, Western made in the UK. It's obviously tongue in cheek and all these British folk are having fun doing a Western. They can barely keep the twinkle eyes from it all. Knowing that makes it that much better. You can be in on the fun or grouse because it's not Jason or Michael. Get your popcorn and blanket, dim the lights and have fun with them.

Blood Moon is a hackneyed B grade werewolf flick with a Western flavour.

The premise behind this film has in one form or another been done before.This is by no means the worst interpretation but its by no means the best either.

The acting is, by and large, of a very good standard. That said the actors are constrained by the, at times, cheesy stereotypical cowboy characterizations, replete with lots of gormless gun twirling. Even worse again, are the tame and tacky monster effects, that are more comical than scary.

Blood Moon had the makings of a half decent horror if only more care had been taken with the special effects and more common sense had been injected into the script. As it stands, this film rates a five out of ten from me.

I saw this at my local film society (its first public showing in Kent, where it was made). I thought it was pretty good by any standards (and not just "pretty good for a film that only cost £520,000").

If you're expecting state of the art special effects and CGI and an extended gore-fest, you'll be disappointed, but it's highly watchable, engaging, sometimes funny and made me jump more than once!

In a Q+A afterwards, the director and the director of photography admitted they had had the same problem that a lot of creature feature makers have - the creature never looks as convincing on screen as you had hoped (we all remember the rubber-looking shark in Jaws!). As a result, their creature is only briefly on screen but its presence and menace are still felt.

All the actors give a good performance but I'd maybe highlight Shaun Dooley as Calhoun, looking like a slightly younger Russell Crowe, and Corey Johnson as Hank.

I'm not a big horror genre fan myself - if you are, you might find yourself insufficiently scared - but Blood Moon still stands as a well-made indie film. It benefits from having been shot in Laredo, a Western town in the UK recreated by a group of re-enactors - the period detail throughout is much more than skin deep and it's a convincing enough location to have fooled many people into believing it was shot State-side.

It's done pretty well on the festival circuit and, as the first British-made Western since "Carry on Cowboy" in 1965 (reputedly), I think it deserves watching.

Well, while this 2014 "Blood Moon" hardly is going to move any boundaries for the werewolf genre, it still turned out to be a watchable and entertaining enough movie for what it was. Sure, there are better werewolf movies available, but "Blood Moon" wasn't actually as bad as I had anticipated.

The storyline in the movie is pretty straight forward, for better or worse. That, unfortunately, means that there are no surprises in store for the audience. So it feels like the movie just fairly quickly settled into a monotonous pace and trotted onwards.

There is enough action in the movie to liven up the moments when you are about to drift off and your attention start to falter. But, for me at least, it just wasn't enough to fully keep my attention. I actually fell asleep during the last 20 minutes or so. Did I go back to watch what I missed? No, the movie was adequate, but it wasn't good enough for me to do that.

The make-up, prosthetics and such were adequate, but not really top of the line. The werewolf was adequate, but hardly the best seen in the werewolf genre. The wounds and such were fair and adequately made.

Now the setting of the movie was good. There is just something about that Western period, so having a werewolf movie set in the late 1880s was just great. That worked quite well for me.

All in all, "Blood Moon" is adequate entertainment for what it turned out to be. However, it just wasn't outstanding enough to make itself memorable. As such, I am rating the movie a mediocre five out of ten stars.

This one actually took me by surprise - I was expecting much less from this film so I found it a pleasant surprise. I think I was expecting bad acting, horrible script, terrible cinematography and that sort of thing but what I found was the complete opposite from my expectations.

You will see the werewolf at the very beginning then it turns into a really good western drama that builds suspense towards the last 30 minutes or so of the film - which is where you will see the werewolf and get some action involved.

I really like this one - it's not a gore fest - there is a little but NOT overly done by any means. It's just a well written and acted werewolf western film.

8/10