Film Review: DIRE WOLF (2009)

I’m not a big fan of director Fred Olen Ray but he has a lot of films behind him of which Dire Wolf (2009) is just one of them.  I wasn’t expecting much from this film but I must say I was pleasantly surprised.   The film is written by Dan Golden and Patrick Moran and for the most part is a solid-monster-escapes-laboratory-and-wreaks-havoc-on-small-town film.  In this case science has decided to splice the human DNA with that of a dire wolf.  When the creature awakens from its sleep it escapes the lab into the open world and kills just about everyone in its path.  The only person that can stop it is Sheriff Parker (a superb Maxwell Caulfield) and his son and several special agents who were sent in to capture the science-gone-amok creature alive.

The monster kills and a lot of people die in gruesome fashion as fitting a good horror film.  Horror fans will delight in the chaos and bloodshed on display in the film despite the very familiar storyline but it is Caulfield as the Sheriff who really shines.  He runs his police office like something out of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks adding a bit of originality and humor to the film.  By the end of the film I was wishing for the Sheriff to get his own TV series from the same town where bad things just always happen but the Sheriff will get to it in his own time.

This being said the rest of the film is pretty standard stuff but its standard stuff done very well and therefore will entertain you from beginning to end.  Now if you can’t stand the cliché monster film then this is definitely not the film for you but if you enjoy a good cup of coffee with your monster movie then this film just might be what you’re looking for.

Film Review: TWIXT (2011)

Between The Rainmaker (1997) and Youth Without Youth (2007) director Francis Ford Coppola has mostly stayed to producing films.  Since Youth Without Youth he has been directing a new film every two years including Tetro (2009) and Twixt (2011).  Each new film that he does is Coppola finding new ways to tell different types of stories that are not typical.  Twixt is Coppola’s way of trying to tell an old story in new way. 

Hall Baltimore (Val Kilmer) is an aging writer of supernatural novels who is on a book store.  He finds his way into a small town that’s a stop on his tour that also happens to be the location of a notorious murder.  Just as Baltimore is leaving town Sheriff Bobby LaGrange (Bruce Dern) comes up to him wanting to know if he would like to collaborate with him on a new novel that involves the town’s latest murder victim.  It seems that the body of an unknown girl has been found with a wooden stake in her chest.  Needing something new to write about Baltimore agrees to the collaboration but soon discovers that the only way to find the “real” story is to go into a deep dreamlike state where he meets odd characters of the town including a goth-like young girl by the name of V (Elle Fanning) and Edgar Allen Poe (Ben Chaplin) who will help him find his new novel that will put him back on the map.

Twixt is Coppola trying to channel his inner David Lynch by way of Twin Peaks but the film is not filled with any interesting characters nor does Kilmer’s Baltimore make for as interesting a main focus as Kyle MacLauchlan’s Special Agent Dale Cooper.  The overuse of CGI in the dream sequences leaves a lot to be desired.  This is a lesser film from the director whose glory days such as The Godfather (1972) and Apocalypse Now (1979) seem far in the distant past.