They Might Be Werewolves

Amazon Prime time! Which usually means a horror movie that no one has ever heard of and never will again.

My favorites. 

Quick Plot: Rich girl Sarah and her friends are partying at her dad's secluded home on a Chumash reservation. 

Yes, they're white.

Ex-boyfriend Alex brings along a card game variation on Werewolf, the perfect campfire-and-hot-sauce-spiked-tequila activity. Also on board are Sarah's older half-siblings Jacey and Tala (thankfully not white), party girls Connie and Liz, and the band "Potheads" (no, really) who respectfully do not subject us to their music. 

A few hours later, everyone wakes up with massive hangovers and lost time. 

Also, lost people. Band member Nick's little Instagram-obsessed sister Julie is missing, most likely from their trip into town for drinks and bars (and no, I don't mean "drinks at a bar"; it's 2023, OBVIOUSLY I'm talking about cell phone reception). Is it a coincidence that she was also the first victim during the gang's game? What can we make out of the pair of glowing eyes just over her shoulder spotted in that fateful last selfie? 

It doesn't take long for a few players to disappear, though it takes a whole lot longer for those remaining to stop drinking (these kids are VERY SMART). Eventually, they piece together some messy facts: the game is real, which means Nick and Connie might be morphing into their werewolf card counterparts when no one is looking.

Written by Chloe Bellande and directed by Terry Spears, As the Village Sleeps has an interesting idea at its core, and calls to mind a few other similarly low budget parlor game-based horrors, including Dead Body and Witch-Hunt (a movie I'm still begging SOMEONE else to see that wasn't me or the director's immediate family). It's a good idea for a horror film, especially when resources are clearly strained. Spears keeps virtually all of the violence offscreen, building the entire threat through situation and dialogue alone. It's admirable.

I just wish it were also entertaining. 

My biggest problem with As the Village Sleeps is that it's centered on aggressively dull to awful people. Nobody seems to actually like each other, let alone care much when they vanish. There's a kernel of an interesting relationship between Sarah and Tala, but it ends as quickly as it's introduced. It also took me a good half hour to figure out whether Tala and Jacey were siblings or lovers. I know I've read my share of VC Andrews and am therefore always looking for both, but still.

High Points

I almost didn't realize just how little action is actually onscreen until I started to think back to the film's details. It takes a bit of a leap of faith to make a horror movie knowing you can't really show any of it, and it's a credit to the filmmakers that it the concept works

Low Points

When your apparent heroine is introduced as the kind of spoiled rich girl who calls her best friend a whore (who of course responds with "bitch!"), it's an uphill battle to ever get us on her side (or any of the fairly unpleasant characters here)

Lessons Learned

The only strangers you'll encounter on a dark road in the middle of the night will be hot chicks or old dudes

You won't find street names on a tribal reservation

Pushing a fully clothed woman into a hot tub is only acceptable if rain is in the forecast

Chekov's Bear Trap

Thank goodness this sign comes into play. As I've said time and time again, if you introduce a bear trap at any point in your film, you damn well better have it go off

Rent/Bury/Buy

As the Village Sleeps is interesting in how it manages to give a fairly creative twist to the standard slasher setup. I just wish it was also interesting to watch. I think some horror fans with an appreciation for low budget potential will get something out of this. I don't regret watching it, but I just have a hard time telling anyone else to.